


Wifed

by redcandle17



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Humor, Nux Lives, Slit Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-04-30 11:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 24,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5162213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcandle17/pseuds/redcandle17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slit, under the impression that Furiosa gave Capable to Nux, demands a wife as well. The Wives decide to troll him, and Slit doesn't realize what he's in for when Toast is "given" to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Slit was adjusting to life without the Immortan. Furiosa had made some stupid changes, like letting useless Wretched filth into the Citadel, but what could you expect from the Imperator who’d traitored the Immortan. She made a big deal about Citadel War Boys not going out on raids anymore and how war was bad. But nobody had told the Buzzards and other Wasteland filth that, so Slit still got to do war. 

He was feeling pretty good right now. His lances had taken out three vehicles, and the war party leader had caught a bullet in the head, so he’d had to take charge. He was due for a reward or a promotion. He knew just what to ask for too. 

“I want a wife,” he said. 

Furiosa and the other women smiled. They seemed amused. Slit had no idea why. 

“One of the Immortan’s wives,” he said. “That’s what I want as reward.” 

They didn’t look amused anymore. Furiosa gave him the sort of hard look he was more familiar with. “You want one of Joe’s wives?”

Slit nodded. “You gave Nux one for helping you with the traitoring. I want one too.”

Furiosa snatched a gun out of one of the women’s hands. It was one of the Immortan’s wives, the one who was confusingly little like a pup but curved very much like a breeder. She lunged at Slit, snarling wordlessly, but Furiosa held her back. 

“That one,” Slit said excitedly. “I want that one!”

The old women were muttering nasty things, but Slit ignored them. He waited for Furiosa to hand over his wife. 

“Get out, Slit,” Furiosa said, dangerously quiet. 

Slit retreated. He kicked various walls, objects, and Wretched on his way back down to the barracks. It wasn’t fair. Nux getting to be a driver, Nux getting picked to ride on the Immortan’s own car, Nux getting rewarded with one of the Immortan’s own wives. And Slit getting nothing. 

“Slit,” Nux said, in cautious greeting. He and his wife, the redhead, were giving out blankets to War Boys. 

Slit ignored him. He refused to take a blanket either. He wasn’t some sick, weak thing near the end of his half life that needed coddling. 

But they wouldn’t let him be. They followed him all the way to his bunk.

“I’ll leave it here if you change your mind,” Nux’s wife said. She laid the folded blanket on the ground.

Slit grumbled and rolled over, pointedly turning his back on her.

“What is it now, you overgrown pup?” Nux asked. He prodded Slit with the toe of his boot.

Slit rolled back to face them and growled. “It’s not fair! I asked for a wife and she just told me to go away. I deserve a wife as much as you!”

Nux’s wife didn’t look so friendly or sympathetic anymore. Nux started to say something, but she put her hand on his chest and he stayed silent.

“You think a wife is something that someone can give to you?” Nux’s wife asked.

Slit nodded. “Yeah. We searched the Wasteland and brought the shiniest and most chrome breeders back to give to the Immortan to be his wives, and then Furiosa gave you to Nux after she killed Immortan.”

“What would you do with a wife?”

Slit didn’t know what you did with a wife other than breed. As enjoyable as he was sure breeding was, you couldn’t do it all the time. The Immortan had never had his wives with him whenever Slit had seen him, but Nux’s wife was always with him. She watched while he repaired vehicles, and once Slit saw him tying her hair in knots while she read to the War Pups. He couldn’t figure out what the rules for having a wife were, but he wasn’t about to admit to ignorance.

“Same things Nux does. But even better.” Slit thought of another argument in his favor. Maybe Nux’s wife would pass it along to Furiosa. “I’m not even at the end of my half life like he is. I’m better breeding stock!”

Nux was glowering at him, but his wife patted his chest. It seemed to be some sort of communication signal.

“Which one of my sisters did you ask for?”

“The little one who likes guns,” he said hopefully.

“You mean you don’t know our names?!”

The Splendid Angharad was the dead one. That’s all Slit knew.

“I’m Capable,” she said.

“What sort of name is that?” he scoffed.

“What sort of name is ‘Slit’?” she retorted. 

“My name’s real shine,” Slit said defensively. ‘Slit’ really was the most shine name ever. Everybody who heard his name had to know he was somebody who could slit their throats easily, even before they saw him for themselves. 

This ‘Capable’ wife made a skeptical sound, but she didn’t dare insult his name further. Instead, she told him, “The woman you asked to own is named Toast.”

Now that he heard the name, Slit realized he had heard it before and forgotten it. “Toast the Knowing.”

“You’re lucky it wasn’t the Dag,” Nux said. “She’d have shredded you with her teeth.”

Slit’s interest in the Dag wife was piqued, but he’d also realized something. “What’s the rest of your name?” he asked Nux’s wife.

She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“Capable the what? Or what the Capable?”

“Capable the Chrome,” Nux said quickly. 

Capable the Chrome made a weird sound, and smiled, and bumped her shoulder against Nux. Nux wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. It was soft and stupid, so Slit was surprised to feel a spike of jealousy. Maybe you were supposed to be soft and stupid with your wife?

“It’s just Capable,” she said. Her cheeks were much pinker than before. 

“You must have been the mediocre wife if the Immortan didn’t give you another name,” Slit said snidely. It was a mean thing to say, and he didn’t actually believe it, but he wanted them to stop looking so happy. 

He succeeded. Capable’s face darkened, but she looked more sad than angry. Slit didn’t try to retaliate when Nux kicked him hard in the chest. He’d pretty much asked for that one. 

“Can’t wait to see Toast shoot you full of holes,” Nux snapped.

Slit watched him lead his wife away, before turning to face the wall. He rubbed his chest and wondered if the tiny breeder - Toast, he reminded himself - would really try to shoot him. It’d be so shine to be carried to Valhalla by something so shiny and chrome.


	2. Chapter 2

Slit thought he was in trouble when a War Pup told him Furiosa wanted to see him. He wasn’t sure what exactly for, but it could be anything. Practically everything was an offense these days. He found her flanked, as usual, by those horrible old women. The Pup-sized Wife, Toast the Knowing, was with them too. She was smiling, but it was a mean-looking smile. Slit liked it.

“You wanted to see me, Imperator?”

Furiosa was frowning, but she didn’t seem mad at him, just mad. “I’ve reconsidered your request for a reward. You can have Toast for your wife.”

“Thank you, Imperator!”

His new wife was wearing trousers like a War Boy or War Pup, but without any belts. Slit grabbed her and began pushing them down past her hips. She yelped and punched him in the ribs. “You animal,” she shouted. She punched him again. It almost hurt.

“What are you doing?” Furiosa asked in her dangerous-quiet voice.

“Going to breed. It’s what you do with a wife.”

The old women were looking at him like he was a particularly psychotic feral they wanted to see shredded. Slit belatedly realized that maybe you weren’t supposed to breed in front of other people. The Immortan never had, and while Nux and his wife Capable were always touching each other and cuddling like little pups, he’d never actually seen them breeding.

“No,” Toast said. “A breeder can only breed one day out of every twenty-eight days. Yesterday was my breeding day, you’ve got to wait twenty-seven days before you can breed with me.”

Slit had never heard that. But then he didn’t know much at all about women except that they were for breeding and milking – except Imperator Furiosa, who only looked like a woman. He glanced at her for help.

“Yes,” she said. “No trying to breed with Toast before then.”

Slit tried not to be resentful that she’d delayed rewarding him and now he had to wait dozens of days before he could breed with his new wife. “Oh,” he said. He wondered what he was supposed to do with her until then.

“Come on,” Toast said. She jabbed him hard in the side. “Let’s go.”

She strode off and Slit had to follow her. “Go where?” he asked.

“Out of Furiosa’s hair,” she said.

Her talk of hair made Slit curious about her hair and he reached out to touch it. It felt nice, for the brief moment he was able to feel it before she jerked away like he’d tried to scalp her. 

“How come your hair’s so much shorter than the other wives?” he asked her.

“I cut it.”

“Why?”

“Because it made me feel better.”

Slit didn’t understand that. “You want me to tie it in knots?”

His wife made a rather unattractive face at him. “Do I want you to _what?_ ”

“Your hair – should I tie it in knots like Nux does for his wife? Yours is short, but I think I can still manage.”

She stared at him for a moment, then she laughed at him. “Idiot, Nux doesn’t tie Capable’s hair in knots! He braids it for her. Granted, he’s not very good yet…”

“I’ll braid yours perfectly!”

“I don’t need my hair braided, lizard-brain.”

Slit wasn’t sure how to respond to her insulting him, so he decided to just ignore it for now. “Well, then do you want me to go shooting with you first, or you want to come lancing with me?”

“I’m thirsty,” she said. “Give me your water.”

“I thought you wives had as much Aqua Cola as you wanted.”

“It’s your responsibility as my husband to provide me with water and food and anything else I need,” she said. She put her hands on her hips and glared at him like she didn’t think he was up to the responsibility.

Slit reluctantly handed over his canteen and watched in dismay as she drank his whole day’s ration of Aqua Cola. He wished he’d known that he’d have to share his Aqua Cola and food with her.

“I’m in the mood for target practice,” she said, smiling that mean smile again.

Slit understood, of course, that you rarely had to shoot at someone who was standing still. It was the same as lancing in that regard. Made better sense to train to hit a moving target. That’s why the War Boys had rigged targets set up on ropes and pulleys operated by older War Pups.

“Too easy,” Toast the Knowing said dismissively. She grabbed a heavy square of metal and thrust it at Slit. “Why don’t you run around with this and I’ll aim for it?”

“You want to shoot at me?” Slit demanded in disbelief. He knew she wasn’t soft like Capable, but this was kami-crazy. Not even many War Boys would do it. 

“You want to help me become a better shot, don’t you?”

Of course he wanted his wife to be a shine shot. But suddenly having a wife who read to Pups didn’t seem so bad. He didn’t want her to think that he was scared, though, or that he didn’t have confidence in her ability to hit the target instead of him, so Slit hefted the metal square to cover his head and began sprinting.

The first shot didn’t hit anywhere near him. Slit didn’t know whether to be relieved by that or concerned. The second shot hit the target, but instead of pride, Slit felt pure terror. He was pretty sure Valhalla wouldn’t admit him if he died during training.

The third shot grazed his arm. Slit had had a dozen injuries far worse than a simple graze, but somehow this shocked and pained him enough to shout and drop the shield.

Toast hurried over to him, looking relieved when she saw that the bullet had only grazed his arm. “It’s just a scratch.”

“Yeah, just a scratch,” Slit agreed. He was embarrassed at how he’d reacted. She must think he was mediocre.

But she was looking uncomfortable and almost guilty. “No need to tell anybody about this, right?”

Slit nodded. “Time to supervise the Pups’ training.”

Toast followed him to the cavern where War Pups were crawling on their bellies on the ground and climbing up ropes strung from the ceiling, and sat down next to him. But when Slit closed his eyes, she seemed not to understand.

“What are you doing?”

“Supervising,” Slit replied, settling more comfortably against the wall.

“It looks like napping.”

“War Boys don’t nap.”

“Right, you just supervise with your eyes closed.”

“Yeah.”

She was quiet for a while; she seemed to be getting the hang of supervising. But then she shrieked.

Slit was startled out of his supervising to see Toast running to a Pup lying on the ground. “Go get the Organic Mechanic,” she shouted.

Slit visually examined the Pup. He didn’t see any serious damage. “No need to bother Organic,” he told his wife. “I fell from higher than that lots of times when I was a Pup.”

She wasn’t listening to him though. She was asking the Pup, “Can you wiggle your toes?”

Apparently she was just as soft towards Pups as Capable. Slit supposed that was part of being a breeder. He hauled the Pup up and set him on his feet, ignoring Toast’s shriek and her attempt to pull the pup back down. “Walk it off,” he told him.

The pup hobbled away, but after a few paces he was walking normally.

“He could have been paralyzed!” Toast said. “It’s irresponsible not to have some sort of safety net or padding.”

Slit scoffed. “Then they wouldn’t care about falling. Might even think it was _fun_.”

“It’s brutal and it results in easily avoidable injuries. I’m going to talk to Furiosa about this!”

For such a small person, Toast moved very quickly. She was turning into another cave by the time Slit realized she intended to speak to Furiosa right away. He ran to catch up to her.

“They won’t work so hard to be good climbers if there’s no consequences for falling. The pain of falling motivates them to avoid falling!”

“That’s not how things are anymore. Or it shouldn’t still be.” 

She stopped abruptly and Slit collided with her. She fell backwards - or threw herself backwards to avoid him? - and Slit hurried to examine her for damage. 

“Don’t touch me!” she yelled. She climbed to her feet, glaring at him. One of her hands rested on the gun she wore at her hip, like she was about to shoot him. 

Slit was confused and he felt unhappy. And not unhappy in the way that made him want to fight somebody, but unhappy in that much rarer way that made him want to be alone in a dark corner. 

He followed her in silence, but when she stopped, they were nowhere near the place that Furiosa called her ‘office’. They were on one of the bridges between towers. 

“We heard a War Pup fell from one of these bridges a few moons before Fury Road. Rictus was crying about it.”

Slit remembered. It’d been real sad. 

“People are supposed to keep children safe. We’re supposed to make it safe for them so they can grow up and have lives and children of their own. We’re not supposed to endanger them. Joe ‘raised’ you boys the way he did because you were just tools to him, just _things_.”

Slit had to correct her. She was wrong. The Immortan had loved him and the others. He’d told them so all the time; they were almost his sons. 

“Shut up,” she said, before he could even get the first word out. “He called you ‘pups’ and kept you so ignorant you didn’t even realize it was an insult. A pup is a young dog. He had his pups trained for no other purpose or to be anything else except his dogs of war. That’s all you and the others were to your Immortan: dogs.”

Slit knew what a dog was. It was an animal. Scrotus had had one. He understood that Toast the Knowing was insulting him by calling him a dog. “Immortan Joe loved us! He was going to lead us to Valhalla like he’d led War Boys before us.”

“He sent them to early deaths and the poor fools went gladly. You’re so stupid, it hurts.”

Slit felt very unhappy. He wanted to be alone for a long time. He didn’t think he liked Toast very much even though she was shiny and chrome and his.


	3. Chapter 3

Slit was too hungry and thirsty to fall asleep. There was a big pit of clean Aqua Cola in the middle of the vault, but Toast insisted he couldn’t drink it, that it was only for bathing. He’d decided he was going to sneak out and drink some of the Aqua Cola once she fell asleep. It was taking her a long time to fall asleep though. Slit couldn’t imagine why; she’d eaten half his rations as well as her own.

“You okay?” he asked, as he heard her shifting around again.

“I’m fine,” she replied, sounding like she was mad at him for asking.

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” He could see the moon through those glass walls the Wives called ‘windows’ and the night was half over already.

“It’s hard to sleep with one eye open.”

Slit didn’t understand. He wondered whether it was a breeder thing. “Close both your eyes,” he suggested.

She made a sound like she’d tried to snort and laugh at the same time, but she didn’t reply. He hoped she was taking his advice. She had tried to send him to sleep in the barracks, but Nux got to sleep in the vault with Capable, and Immortan Joe had lived with his wives, so Slit knew he was supposed to sleep with Toast. She’d seemed angry that he knew that much about having a wife, but she’d told him he could sleep on the floor next to her bed.

Slit strongly suspected that Nux’s wife allowed him to sleep on her bed with her, but his wife just didn’t like him as much as Capable liked Nux. In fact she didn’t seem to like him at all. Hated him, even. He briefly worried that she’d get Furiosa to kill him like they’d gotten Furiosa to kill Immortan Joe, but it didn’t make any sense for Furiosa to reward him and then kill him.

Something soft hit him suddenly and Slit realized Toast had thrown a blanket at him. He really didn’t understand why the wives were so concerned with giving everyone blankets. But this one smelled nice. It smelled like her. He tucked it under his head.

The next thing he knew, he was being stomped. Slit grabbed at his attacker, waking instantly.

“Sorry I stepped on you, I forgot you were there. Now let go of me.”

It was morning, and Slit’s attacker was his wife, whose leg he had hold of. Her bare leg felt really warm and soft, and he liked holding it, but Toast looked like she was already halfway mad at him, so Slit reluctantly let go of her and stood up. 

He followed her out of her ‘bedroom’ but stopped when it became clear she was heading to the fancy latrine. She’d yelled at him last night for trying to follow her inside. Slit seized the chance to crouch by the Aqua Cola pit and scoop up handfuls to drink. He’d almost quenched his thirst when Toast came out of the latrine and caught him. 

He expected her to yell at him, but she only said, “I told you that water’s not for drinking,” and she didn’t even sound angry. 

There was a table with a bowl of things that grew on the green things - ‘fruits’ and ‘vegetables’ - and Toast plucked out several small red things and began eating them. She tossed one at Slit, which he caught easily. It tasted okay.

“I’d planned on giving you peppers and telling you they were cherries. I was really looking forward to seeing you cry.” She sighed. “But I guess it’s not your fault you’re so ignorant.” 

Slit’s first impulse was to deny that there was anything that could make him cry. He didn’t, though, because he was now certain that if there did happen to be something that might be able to make him cry, Toast would know about it. He didn’t want to provoke or challenge her into doing it. 

“What’s ‘peppers’ and what’s ‘cherries’?” he asked. 

“Cherries are the fruit we’re eating right now.” She tossed another one at him. “Peppers are also small and red, but taste… well, like eating fire, I’d imagine. Somebody who ate one whole would cry and beg for water.” 

Slit was conflicted. He liked that Toast wanted to feed those ‘pepper’ things to people she didn’t like, but he didn’t like that he was one of those people. But she hadn’t done it, and she probably didn’t plan to do it anymore or she wouldn’t have told him. Maybe she liked him a little better than yesterday?

“What are we doing today?”

“I’ll be consulting with the workers. You can do whatever you want.”

‘Workers’ was what everybody was supposed to call the slaves and the useless Wretched now. Slit certainly wasn’t going to be anywhere but by his wife’s side if she insisted on talking to filth. He followed her down to the chow hall. They let slaves and Wretched eat and loiter there now, so most War Boys only went to collect their rations and did their actual eating - and unproductive loitering - in the barracks. 

The War Pups, however, were very young and still prey to bad influences. They seemed unruffled to be sharing space with filth, and Slit was disgusted to see that some of them were even talking to the Wretched. 

“What’s a Wretched got to be saying to any Pup?” he complained.

“Quite a bit, I’d imagine,” his wife replied. “Seeing as how they’re your parents and cousins.” 

Slit stared at her in incomprehension. 

Toast looked at him with something he identified as pity. It was much worse than if she’d been angry at him. “Don’t you War Boys know where you come from?”

Slit knew that some War Boys had been given to the Immortan so he could lead them to Valhalla, and some had been taken because they had potential to be useful in war, like that Buzzard-spawn Morsov. But that didn’t matter, or wasn’t supposed to. Once you became a War Pup, the other Pups and War Boys were your family. 

Toast was shaking her head, but she didn’t say anything else about it. She got him double rations of food and Aqua Cola today, since he’d have to share with her. Slit was very happy about that. 

He ate while she began her day’s work by talking to some of the slaves in the chow hall. He supposed they weren’t slaves anymore if they got as much food as a War Boy and they got to go anywhere in the Citadel and even just do nothing. Slit had the sudden thought that maybe it was the other War Boys who were slaves now. 

Toast went down to where they operated the pumps that drew cold Aqua Cola out of the dark depths of the earth, and up to where they grew green things on the surface of the towers. Slit had never been among the growing green things before. This close, he could see that they weren’t all the same green. Some of them weren’t even green at all. And while he’d always heard that the ‘fruits’ and ‘vegetables’ grew on the green things, it seemed that it was the other way around for some of them.

He was crouched, peering closely as a worker pulled a green thing up from the ground to reveal a long orange thing, when he realized he could hear Toast speaking with another wife. The other wife had looked at him with pity instead of trying to shred him with her teeth, so Slit had been disappointed to learn that she was the Dag. 

“He’s like a child,” she was saying to Toast.

Toast sighed. “I know.”

“We’ll have to change the plan.”

Toast sighed again. “I already have. I felt too sorry for him after catching him drinking water from the pool.”

Slit was instinctively outraged at them feeling sorry for him, since it implied he was something pitiful and in need of being sorry for. But he reminded himself that, based on how soft they wanted things for the Pups and how they insisted on treating the slaves as not-slaves, the wives liked feeling sorry for people. He wanted Toast to like him and think he was the most shine War Boy, but maybe the first step was letting her feel sorry for him and treating him soft. Though he’d have to be careful that he didn’t let it make him soft for real.


	4. Chapter 4

Slit missed his bunk. He felt exposed sleeping out on the floor like this, and not just because Toast had only once remembered not to step on him. Her bed was high up enough that there was space beneath it for someone, provided that someone didn’t forget where he was and try to sit up. Slit crawled under the bed and made himself comfortable. He fell asleep almost immediately.

“Slit?! Slit?!”

Slit woke to the sight of Toast’s bare little feet walking back into her room.

He climbed out from under the bed.

She shrieked.

“You were looking for me?” he asked.

“What were you doing under there?!”

“Sleeping.” Slit stretched. He hadn’t slept so well since he’d moved up here.

Toast closed her eyes and took an exaggeratedly deep breath. Then she opened her eyes and glared at him. “Why were you sleeping under my bed?”

“It reminds me of my bunk.”

The look on her face changed like she’d heard something terrible rather than what Slit had said. But she didn’t say anything. She gave him more ‘fruits’ than usual though. Although she’d told him that it was his responsibility to give her food, lately she’d been giving him things to eat and extra Aqua Cola. Slit didn’t question her about the change, lest she stopped. 

“Who are you talking to today?” he asked. She wasted hours each morning listening to people tell her their whole wretched life stories. Sometimes she’d write things down in the small book she kept in a pocket. 

“We’re interviewing the Milk Mothers,” she replied. 

Slit didn’t know why she said ‘we’ when she snapped at him whenever he said something to the people she talked to. Once she’d told him he was just plain mean, and then she’d gotten mad at him and yelled that it was meant to be an insult, not a compliment. But this sounded promising. Slit was looking forward to getting some mother’s milk. 

However, no one offered him any. There were a couple of small Pups without paint on. But he knew they were War Pups because they knew him. One of them said, “Hi, Slit! This is my mommy!”

Slit supposed he was referring to the milker whose lap he was sitting in. “What happened to your war paint, pup?”

The milker glared at him, but it was the pup who answered. “It makes my mommy sad.”

Soft. They were all going to be soft and weak and Buzzards were going to eat them. Slit opened his mouth to let this be known, but Toast grabbed his arm and squeezed it. They hadn’t discussed communication signals, but Slit decided it meant she wanted him to keep quiet. He was thrilled that she was using communication signals with him like Nux’s wife used with Nux, so he kept quiet.

Some of the milkers cried while they talked to Toast. It made Slit very uncomfortable. Toast kept mentioning the milking machines, but the milkers didn’t seem as upset by them as she was. They were more concerned with their babies dying or being taken away and never seeing them. Slit didn’t understand why they were still crying about it when some of them had their pups back. 

Maybe Toast knew he didn’t understand because when they’d left the milking room, she said, “Joe didn’t keep records of who was whose child. You’d think he would to avoid incest and breeding unhealthy stock.” She sounded bitter. Then she continued, “Those boys might not be those women’s sons. The mothers fought over the youngest ‘pups’ - all of them want to believe they’re their stolen children.”

Slit would pretend to be any milker’s son if she’d give him milk, but he was sure Toast would be mad at him if he told her. This ‘interview’ left him feeling more uncomfortable than the others. He’d never given any thought to what happened to milkers once they stopped producing milk, and while the Citadel hadn’t had any place for useless people, it made him feel strange to think of old milkers being cast out among the Wretched. 

“I doubt they lived long after that,” Toast had commented. “Going from practically being forced fed all day to starving would probably send their bodies into shock or something.”

He felt better once they reached the shooting practice part of the day. Toast didn’t use him as her target anymore, though she’d told him his shooting was mediocre and smirked at him. So now Slit practiced instead of just watching her practice. 

She refused to learn lancing, but she was letting Slit teach her how to fight with a knife. She claimed he enjoyed it too much and he touched her too much, and maybe he did, but it was hard work. He’d always been one of the larger War Boys and it took a lot of thought to figure out how to teach tiny Toast. At least with War Pups, he taught them on the assumption that they’d be big one day and be fighting people around their own size.

Slit had to resort to provoking a fight with Runt, the smallest War Boy - who was still a bit bigger than Toast - and studying how he fought. Slit kicked his ass, of course, but Runt wasn’t mediocre at fighting. 

He had to spend the late afternoon of every day away from Toast. She’d insisted. She said she’d go crazy and murder him if she had to see him all day every day. He usually used the time to exercise and re-apply his paint and tell the other War Boys how shine it was to have a wife and live in the vault. 

Nux called him an asshole for bragging and making the others feel bad, but as Slit saw it, he was motivating them to be less mediocre. If they made an effort to be as shine as him and Nux, they could get wives too. There were still two wives who didn’t belong to anybody. 

Slit wouldn’t admit it, since it didn’t involve war in any way, but his favorite part of the day was before bedtime when the wives and Nux and him just sat around. They talked, but Slit just listened and only partly because everything he said made the wives or Nux mad. He’d learned that Immortan Joe had been covered in sores beneath his paint, like some Wretched, and he couldn’t even breed unless the Organic Mechanic gave him medicine to make his cock hard. Slit had to conclude that Joe hadn’t been worthy of being the Immortan. 

Every night Slit had to make an effort not to stare at Toast’s legs after she took off her pants. He’d tried to take off his pants, too, the second night, but she’d screeched and pointed her gun at him. Maybe it was because he didn’t have any of that soft-looking white cloth to wrap around his breeding parts like she did. 

“Night,” he said, when Toast turned off the lamp. He started to crawl under the bed.

“No,” Toast said. She sighed. “You can sleep up here, but you’d better stay on your side and don’t touch me. If you touch me, I’ll castrate you.” 

The bed was soft. It was almost uncomfortable. Sleeping on something this soft was bound to make a person soft and weak. Slit would have preferred the floor, but sleeping on a bed was a privilege. It was a double-privilege actually because it meant Toast liked him now. And it was only fifteen days until they could breed. He went to sleep happier than he could ever remember being before. 

Slit was used to sleeping through War Boys making all sorts of sounds during the night, but he must have gotten used to the quiet of the vault because he woke up at the sound of Toast making quiet noises. He thought she was in pain, but before he could begin examining her, he realized that she was crying.

When War Pups cried, you told them they were good at something or the other even if they weren’t and maybe you patted them on the head. On the infrequent occasion that you caught another War Boy crying, you pretended he wasn’t crying. Slaves cried often, of course, but you ignored that just like you ignored their begging and them trying to talk to you.

His wife was crying and Slit had no idea what to do. He wondered what Nux would do, but every time he tried to do what Nux did for Capable, Toast yelled at him. He was sure this would be no different. He couldn’t think of anything else but asking, “Why are you crying?”

“I’m not,” she said, but it was obviously a lie.

Slit was instinctively certain that it was his responsibility to make her stop crying. “Yes, you are. Stop.”

“Fuck you.”

Slit was so startled, he didn’t know how to respond. He hoped she wouldn’t change her mind about liking him and letting him sleep on the bed. 

“It must be nice to be so ignorant of everything, even your own mistreatment. I almost envy you.”

“I’m not stupid.” 

“I didn’t say you were stupid, I said you were ignorant. There’s a difference. Ignorance means a lack of knowledge. I’m taking the chance that you’re not stupid and you’ll learn if we teach you.”

“Teach me what? To be soft on the Pups and make them grow up weak?! To treat Wretched like most of them aren’t useless?!”

“That people are not things!” She practically shouted it. Probably woke the others. “People aren’t machines; they don’t have to have a use. They don’t have to be healthy and they sure as shit don’t have to be ‘shiny and chrome’ to be worthy of food and water.”

That was so ridiculous Slit didn’t even know what to say. She was the Knowing, she was supposed to know better.

“Everyone has to work and contribute, I know that. I’m not naïve. But no one should have to…”

Slit waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. At least now that she was mad at him she wasn’t crying anymore. But she still didn’t revoke his bed privilege. So maybe she wasn’t mad. Maybe she was still sad. What did she like? She liked shooting.

“Want to go shoot something?”

“All I want to shoot is Joe and the men like him who made the world a wasteland.” She sighed. “Go back to sleep, Slit.”


	5. Chapter 5

The heap of rusted scraps Bones had stumbled upon was proving to be a much more extensive cache than they’d thought. Slit wished he’d been the one to find it. It was some consolation, however, that his wife was in charge of the scavenging crew. Even if she’d insisted on bringing along one of those horrible old women. 

“There’s tons of good stuff here,” Diesel said, happily digging to excavate yet more stuff. It didn’t matter that none of the War Boys and Repair Boys knew what this stuff had been used for. They could find lots of new uses for all of it. 

“This stuff is _old_ ,” the old woman said. She was examining the stuff like she had some sort of claim to it. 

Slit was deeply resentful. Everything the War Boys had found in the Wasteland used to belong to Immortan Joe. That was okay, that was the way it was supposed to be. Slit hadn’t minded that the Immortan and the Immortan’s family and the Immortan’s chosen Imperators got more stuff and better stuff than him. No War Boy had. But this old woman was an outsider, a feral, and they were supposed to just accept her being put above them and getting their stuff that they had found. 

“Looks like some stuff from World War 2 that got misplaced and forgotten about,” she continued. 

Slit’s attention was piqued. He’d heard of the oil wars, and the water wars, and the World War 3 that had turned the world into the wasteland, but he’d never considered that there might have been a World War 2. There must have been a World War 1 too. How exciting, even if those people had destroyed everything before he was born. 

“Is it safe?” Toast asked. “I’ve read that the old wars left lots of landmines buried all over and forgotten.”

“Should be safe enough. There was some bombing, but I don’t think there was any fighting on Australian soil.”

Toast was looking at some things Slit knew were called ‘photos’ though he’d only seen a few of them in his life. The ones he’d seen before had been colorful, but these were clearly damaged and just showed everything in shades of grey. 

“This one’s good looking,” she said, and Slit realized she was referring to the man in the photo. 

The old woman took the photo from Toast. “Yeah, bet he was very popular with the girls. But those ice cream cones… Oh, Toast, I can’t even describe it. I’ve forgotten the actual taste of ice cream, but I remember that it was the best thing in the world.”

Toast accepted the photo back from the old woman and looked at it again before dropping it onto the small pile of other photos. Slit grabbed them all, giving his wife and the old woman a defiant glare. But they didn’t say he couldn’t see the photos. They just seemed amused. 

The man Toast had called good looking wasn’t as ugly as the other men in the photos, but he had so much hair on his head that he almost looked feral and there were no scars on his face. He looked rather mediocre. Slit let his opinion be known. “Mediocre.”

“You know, that word doesn’t mean what you think it means,” his wife told him. She took the offending photo away from him and studied it. “And this boy was definitely not mediocre in any sense of the word. Although…” She looked him and then craned her neck as if to look at him from a different angle. She dropped the photo suddenly and her face changed, like she’d become angry. 

“Stop making the others do all the work and go dig, War Boy,” she said to him. 

Slit went to dig, hoping to discover something truly chrome or at least something mildly shiny and small enough to fit in his pockets. He found a few things that interested him enough to steal, and he might have found more if that asshole Bones didn’t keep tossing his sand right where Slit was digging. He didn’t even get to fight him properly either, because Toast yelled at them and then told him to start loading the stuff onto the vehicles. 

She seemed to be in a bad mood when they returned to the Citadel, despite all the good stuff they’d brought back. “You stink,” she snapped at him. 

Slit breathed in deeply. He didn’t smell any different. 

“You smell bad,” she said, if she thought he didn’t know what ‘stink’ meant. 

He’d bathed and applied fresh paint just three days ago. Though he guessed that might be a long time for her. She and the other wives bathed every day, and even Nux was bathing every day now. Sometimes Nux and Capable bathed together, but Slit wasn’t allowed to even watch Toast bathe. He had to stay in her bedroom with the door closed when she or the others were bathing. 

“You’re going to take a bath,” she said, making it sound like an order. 

Slit immediately began taking off his boots and then started unbuckling his belts. Toast turned away and stared at the wall like it was more interesting than him. 

Bathing was something you did so you didn’t get rusted. Slit had never particularly enjoyed it or hated it. But he was enjoying lying in this ‘bathing pool’ thing. 

Then the Dag came into the vault and saw him. “I don’t think he knows how to bathe properly. He still has grease on his face.”

Toast spun around and saw that Slit had been too distracted by how shine it was to bathe like this to wash his face. She scowled at him. Then she grabbed a rag and strode to the pool like she was going to do something worse than just helping him bathe. She dunked the rag in the water and then started scrubbing at Slit’s face. It was unpleasant, but nowhere near as painful as getting his cheeks cut from mouth almost to ear, so he kept quiet. 

The Dag had sat down beside the pool and she was watching Slit get bathed by Toast like she thought it was funny. Toast seemed to be trying to scrub off his skin as well as his paint. She was definitely angry at him and Slit had no idea why. But she was bathing him and maybe tomorrow or the day after that, she’d bathe with him. 

When she was finished, she looked at him right in the face and her expression changed like something terrible had happened. “No,” she said. 

“First Nux and now him,” the Dag said. “Do you think they’re all like that under that paint?”

Slit assumed she was talking about his naked skin. So he told her, “Lots of War Boys are different colors than me and Nux.” 

“I knew that,” she replied. “I was wondering whether they were all as aesthetically pleasing too.” 

“Don’t,” Toast said to the Dag sharply. 

Slit didn’t know what ‘aesthetically’ meant, but pleasing had to be a good thing. And the wives liked Nux, so if they thought Slit was like Nux in some way, it was definitely a good thing for him. Toast must like him even more than he’d realized.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In juliettdelta's fic "A Toast to the Future" Slit is under the impression that he doesn't look good without his white paint.
> 
> me: It's got me wondering whether Nux and Slit are aware of just how good looking they are minus War Boy costuming.  
> me: Though I also now want to write crack!fic about Slit finding a old photo of Chuckler from The Pacific and declaring him to be mediocre-looking.  
> juliettdelta: Yeah, that'd be good. And Toast is like whaaaat that guy is so cute are you kidding? And Slit gets jealous of his own face and it's beautiful.
> 
>  
> 
> Obligatory gifs of Slit's actor Josh Helman in HBO's The Pacific:  
> http://redcandle17.tumblr.com/post/131122325602/yes-maam-i-am-a-corporal-requested-by   
> http://redcandle17.tumblr.com/post/131515448672/heart-worm-screams-internally  
> http://redcandle17.tumblr.com/post/130709705612


	6. Chapter 6

Slit felt uneasy without his war paint. He felt like everybody was looking at him and not because they were impressed by how shine he was. They were looking at him weird. He would have gone down to the barracks and gotten painted up like a proper War Boy as soon as his bath was over, but his wife had forbidden it. 

“You can paint yourself tomorrow if you want. I’m not having my work go to waste.”

Even Nux started looking at Slit funny after his wife Capable whispered something in his ear. 

Most of the stuff they’d scavenged was piled in the middle of the vault. The wives and the old women were examining everything while they waited for Furiosa. Slit supposed Furiosa was the new Immortan. 

“Slit,” Capable said. She was looking at the photos and she was smiling, but it wasn’t a mean smile. She seemed to have forgiven him for calling her mediocre. 

“No,” he said. “I don’t look anything like that soft excuse of a warrior!” 

One of the old women - Slit refused to learn the names of ferals - had said that the photos were of American Marines, which supposedly had been a war party. Slit wasn’t sure he believed it. They didn’t even have weapons. Slit had pointed this out, and the old woman had explained something called ‘R and R’ but he refused to believe that warriors had taken breaks from war. Made no sense at all. 

“He must have been your ancestor,” Capable said. 

“No,” Slit denied. 

“He doesn’t have ancestors,” Toast said. “He doesn’t even have parents. He sprang into existence as the most chrome War Pup ever.” 

Slit was certain she was making fun of him. He was about to insist that since he didn’t remember anything before being a War Pup, whatever had existed then hadn’t been _Slit_ , when Furiosa walked into the vault. She seemed surprised to see him - and not happy about it. 

“Toast, may I speak with you privately?”

Toast went into her room with Furiosa and closed the door. Slit made his way across the vault so he could listen without it being clear that that was what he was doing. He could only make out occasional words though.

“admirable project”

“not a pet”

“have to kill him if”

All Furiosa. Whatever his wife was saying was too quiet for Slit to hear. That last one worried him a bit, but Furiosa had said “if” so she might not kill him. 

She and Toast came back out. They didn’t say anything to or about Slit, though Toast looked at him and sighed and shook her head. 

Furiosa sorted through the scavenged stuff and decided what was going where, and when it was all done, she and the old women left. Slit was glad to see them leave. He liked when it was just him and Nux and the wives. 

“Did you steal anything good?” Nux asked him. 

The wives looked shocked. Slit supposed that since they got the best stuff, they didn’t have to steal. Though he supposed his stealing was him stealing from them. He’d stolen stuff from Nux, but stealing from your driver and stealing from your wife might be different. 

“Do all War Boys steal?” Capable asked Nux, as Slit emptied his pockets of the stuff he’d taken from the scavenging site.

“Course,” Nux replied. “Have to. Slit’s real good at stealing. My pursuit vehicle wouldn’t have been the fastest if he hadn’t stolen stuff for me.”

“Stole a ration bar right out of that Buzzard-spawn Morsov’s pockets while I was kicking his ass once,” Slit said proudly. 

Nux picked up a small metal container that the War Boys had learned contained food. “Food,” he exclaimed. “What’s this word, Capable?”

“Spam?” she replied. “I think. I don’t know that word. Maybe it’s a misspelling of ‘ham’?”

“You can’t eat that,” Toast said, sounding horrified.

“It’ll make you sick and maybe even kill you,” the Dag said. “It’s too old.” 

“I’ll keep it and eat it when I’m dying anyway,” Nux said. He stuffed the spam into one of his pockets. 

“That’s mine!” Slit protested. 

“Not anymore, unless you want to try to take it back.” Nux was grinning, enjoying the anticipation of a fight. 

Normally Slit would have fought him. But he strongly suspected it would make the wives mad. His wife squeezed his arm, confirming Slit’s suspicion. “Let him have it,” she said. But she was frowning at Nux and at Capable.

Capable looked like she couldn’t decide what to feel. Slit hoped she’d make Nux give him back his ‘spam’ but she didn’t. He decided she was probably thinking about Nux dying. 

He displayed his best prize. “Matches!” he said. 

Nux’s eyes lit up, and Slit was ready to kick his ass if he tried to take them, regardless of how mad it’d make the wives, but fortunately for Nux, he didn’t try to seize Slit’s little thing of matches. 

Toast was shaking her head again, but she was smiling this time. 

When it was bedtime and they were alone in her room, she said, “What am I going to do with you, Slit?”

Slit looked at her hopefully. It was still seven days until they could breed, but maybe they could ‘snuggle’ as Cheedo called it when Nux and Capable sat around like they were trying to keep each other warm even though it was warm up here. 

“Furiosa says I’m playing with fire and then you go and literally produce matches.” 

Slit tried to reason out what she meant by this. 

“If I was smart, I’d have just given you a new scar for thinking you could own me.” 

But he did own her. She was his wife. Furiosa had said so. Though lately Slit had started thinking that it might be the other way around and maybe your wife owned you. 

She turned onto her side to look at him and Slit mimicked her. “Do you realize that without all that crap on you, you and Nux are as ‘shiny and chrome’ as us _treasures_?”

Slit didn’t like that. There were filth in the Wasteland who kept boys the way others kept prize breeders. All the more reason he needed his war paint, but at least he had his scars and his lump to keep him from looking too soft.

“It’s almost tempting,” she said. Then she flopped onto her back and sighed. “But you’ve got a long ways to go. I’m not sure you even see yourself as a person, much less anybody else.” 

“Of course I’m a person!” For someone called the Knowing, Toast said weird and wrong things all the time. 

“Hmm,” she replied, which could mean anything. She reached to turn off the lamp.

“You forgot your gun,” Slit reminded her. She always slept with her gun under her pillow, but he guessed she was so distracted by him without his paint that she’d forgotten tonight. 

She gave him a very odd look, then she said, “Thanks for reminding me. I think I’ll survive one night without it though.” 

Slit couldn’t let her start getting weak. He got out of bed and got her gun for her. 

She was shaking her head and smiling again. But she slid the gun under her pillow. “Good night, Slit.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented on the previous chapter! Your comments are much appreciated. :)

Slit liked looking at Toast before she woke up, even when she was drooling. It made him feel strange and think strange things, but somehow he still liked it. She hadn’t liked waking up to find him watching her when she first let him sleep on the bed, but she didn’t seem to mind anymore. 

“You’re smiling,” she said. “Did you dream you were ‘immortan’ of the whole wasteland again?”

“No, I was thinking how I’m certain you own me.”

She seemed surprised and she started to say something, but then a strange look appeared on her face. “And you aren’t upset about it?”

He shook his head. “I’m glad it’s you. You’re shine as well as shiny and chrome.” 

“A high compliment indeed,” she said, and he knew she was mocking the words War Boys used - she’d told him several times that they used words all wrong - but her smile didn’t look the least bit mean. 

The Dag was usually gone before he and Toast came out of their room, but today she was sitting in the middle of the vault with Nux and Capable. “I have an idea, Toast, and, Slit, I need your help.”

“I might damage the green things,” Slit said uncertainly. 

The Dag chuckled. “I don’t need your help planting. I need you and Nux to control the other War Boys if they get unruly.”

Slit couldn’t wait to control the others, but he was a little worried about them too. He glanced at Toast. She was peeling a ‘honeydew’ fruit thing. 

Nux and Capable were feeding each other like they were pups too little to feed themselves. It was almost sickening. 

He was going to have to ask the Dag himself. “What are you going to do to them?”

“What if I said I was going to castrate them all?”

Slit stared at her in horror. At least he and Nux would be safe; their wives wouldn’t let her remove their breeding parts. But he felt real bad for the others. 

The Dag laughed loudly and for a long time. Every time she stopped, she started laughing again. “His face,” she said, gasping breathlessly. “Toast, did you see his face?”

“Don’t tease him,” his wife said. She gave him pieces of honeydew she’d cut up for their morning meal. “The worse something is, the more he believes it’s true.”

“Cheedo and I were talking about that R and R custom Mel told us about the other day, how in the old world they’d let their soldiers take a break from war and remember what it was like to be a person and enjoy being alive. I thought it might be good to let all the War Boys see the gardens up close.” 

Slit was relieved. He should have known it would be something soft. But the Dag had been rubbing her belly last night and complaining about how terrible men were. 

“I don’t want them trampling my plants and stealing everything though, so Nux and Slit will be on guard duty.” 

Slit was thrilled. He wouldn’t let any of those others steal even a speck of green. 

It turned out to be an easy duty. The other War Boys were very careful not to damage the green things. They were in awe, and Slit couldn’t even call them mediocre for acting so worshipful. None of them had ever been allowed up here when Joe was Immortan. 

When Bones went to his knees in front of the Dag, Slit thought he thought she was the new Immortan. But instead of praising her, Bones said, “Will you marry me?”

Everybody stared at him. But while the other War Boys, including Slit and Nux, looked confused, the wives looked curious and even pleased. 

“Where did you learn that?” Toast asked Bones. 

“I heard an old Wretched say this was how he got a wife.”

Slit shook his head in disgust. War Boys hadn’t gone so soft yet that they talked to Wretched, but Slit had caught some of them listening while Wretched talked to each other. Bones was clearly the most mediocre War Boy now that Morsov wasn’t around. 

“I’m flattered by your request, but my answer is no,” the Dag said. She patted Bones on the head and told him to get up. 

Slit scoffed. Asking a wife to be your wife. How ridiculous. He remembered those ‘pepper’ things Toast had told him about. He could see some little red things on a plant thing, but he didn’t know whether they were peppers or cherries. He wanted a pepper to trick Bones into eating. 

He bent and put his mouth against his wife’s ear so none of the others would overhear. “Which ones are the peppers?”

“What?” Toast asked, like she hadn’t heard even though he’d whispered it right into her ear. She looked very strange. 

Slit tried to whisper his question again, but she leaned back away from him. He noticed her nipples were poking against her shirt, like she was cold. It was hot up here in the sunlight though. Slit hoped she wasn’t getting sick. She was supposed to be healthy and perfect. He tried to feel her forehead so he could check whether she had a fever, but she practically leapt away from him. 

“I have things to do in the armory. You stay here and do what the Dag asked.”

Slit was worried, but he didn’t want to make her and the Dag angry by leaving. He looked pointedly at each War Boy to make sure none of them even thought of trying to steal anything, then he hurried to Capable. 

“I think Toast is sick. You wives aren’t supposed to get sick!”

Capable was alarmed. “I’ll check on her.”

Slit tried to do his job, but he was desperate to go to his wife. “They’re looking restless,” he lied to the Dag. 

The Dag looked like she knew he was lying, but she said, “That is enough for the first time, I think.”

Instead of just telling them to leave, though, she told the other War Boys they could each have one fruit. They were real excited about that, but some of them didn’t get to have the fruits they wanted because the Dag said they weren’t ‘ripe’ and then explained that ‘not ripe’ meant it wasn’t ready to eat. She let them pick something else. 

Slit wasn’t sure she’d included him and Nux in her offer of fruits, and Nux wasn’t taking anything, but Slit plucked a little red fruit when he thought no one was looking in his direction. Toast could tell him what it was, and if it was a cherry, he’d give it to her or eat it himself if she didn’t want it. 

He checked the armory - and got really worried when Toast wasn’t where she’d said she was going. He checked the Blood Shed, but she wasn’t there either. He practically ran all the way to the vault. 

She and Capable were sitting together, looking perfectly healthy and safe. Well, Toast was still looking strange, but Capable looked happy and Slit was certain she wouldn’t be if her friend was sick. 

“He told me he loved me this morning.”

“He said that?!” Capable asked excitedly. 

Slit seethed with instantaneous rage. They hadn’t noticed him and he hung back so they wouldn’t. He had to learn the name of the traitoring son of a Buzzard who’d dared to tell Slit’s wife he loved her so he could shred him. 

“Not those words, but I think that’s what he meant.”

“What did he say exactly?”

“He said I owned him, and he seemed happy about it. You should have seen the way he was looking at me.”

Slit realized she was talking about him. He was confused. What she’d thought he’d said wasn’t what he’d said, but she was right about him loving her. Of course, he loved her. She was his wife. He didn’t understand why she seemed so surprised about it. 

He walked slowly and aimlessly until he found himself in the repair bay where Nux was working on the salvaged war rig. Apparently he looked worried still, because Nux asked, “She’s really sick?”

“No,” Slit said. He leaned an elbow against the rig and rested his head on the palm of his hand. A couple of Repair Boys looked at him longingly, but he ignored them. He didn’t waste his time with anyone who wasn’t good enough to do war and, anyway, he had a wife. 

“She’s being all strange because she thinks I told her I love her.”

Nux’s reaction was surprising. He looked _wary_. “I don’t think you know how lucky you are, Slit. Toast was supposed to make you wish they’d decided to shred you, but instead…” 

He bumped his forehead against Slit’s forehead lightly and stared at him real serious. “Don’t do anything that’ll make me have to kill you for Capable.”

Slit huffed. What was wrong with everybody today. Everybody was acting strange. 

He spent hours throwing practice thundersticks and then actually watching the pups while he supervised them. Half of them didn’t even wear paint anymore and a few even refused to let their heads be shaved. They said it made “the mothers” happy. Slit couldn’t summon much outrage at the state of the Citadel these days, not when he was trying to understand why his wife was behaving so strange. 

When he returned to the vault, he pretended he hadn’t overheard Toast and Capable talking, and he ignored the threatening looks Nux was shooting at him. Shit. He hoped Nux didn’t tell Capable that Slit knew what Toast had told her. He must have looked worried, because Toast touched his arm. 

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Slit remembered the little red fruit he had hidden in a pocket. He took it out and showed it to her. “Is it a pepper?” he asked.

“No, it’s a cherry.”

Slit was only a little disappointed. “Do you want it?”

She got another strange look on her face. “Are you offering me your stolen fruit?”

He nodded. 

“Thank you, Slit.” She took it from him and popped it into her mouth.

Looking at her mouth reminded Slit that there were only three days until they were going to breed. He couldn’t wait.


	8. Chapter 8

“Can I have a bath?” Slit asked. Toast liked how he looked without his paint, so he had the idea that he should wash it off before breeding tomorrow. 

“Go ahead,” she replied. 

After a moment, she looked up from her book and frowned at him. “If you’re waiting for me to bathe you, you’ll be waiting a very long time.”

Slit understood that to mean she wasn’t going to help him bathe again. It was disappointing, but he forgot his disappointment once he was lying in the bathing pool. Lately his ideas about what Valhalla must be like had been changing, and one of the things he’d decided was that it surely contained plenty of bathing pools. 

He had his eyes closed, when someone else climbed in and began splashing around. Slit opened his eyes to glare at Nux. “Stop acting like a pup!”

Nux’s only response was to splash harder. 

“You’re disturbing me from thinking important thoughts!”

Nux stilled at that. “Oh?”

Slit had never breeded before, but he was fairly sure that it was a lot like fucking except that you had to be gentler because wives were so much softer than War Boys. Nux must have breeded at least twice with Capable by now, but he selfishly hadn’t told anyone what it was like. Slit wasn’t going to ask him anything; if Nux could figure out how to breed, then Slit could too. He’d probably be much more shine at it than Nux too.

“Yeah. In fact you can splash all you want. I’ve got important things to do.”

He climbed out of the pool and went to the mirror to make sure he’d gotten all the paint and grease off his face. His scars did look more chrome without the white paint. Slit retrieved a clean rag from one of his pockets and carefully polished the staples in his cheek and his side. Even unpainted, he was much more shine-looking than most other War Boys were with their paint. He put on back his pants, but didn’t bother with his boots. He wasn’t going to be leaving the vault until the day after tomorrow anyway.

Toast was still reading when Slit went back into her bedroom. She looked surprised to see him without his paint. Then she smirked and said, “Realized how ‘shiny and chrome’ you look without that stuff?” 

“You like me better like this.”

One of those strange looks appeared on her face. “You did it for me?”

Slit nodded. He laid down on his side of the bed and turned so he could watch Toast read. She was frowning at the book and she kept glancing at him. Finally she put the book on the floor and turned off the lamp. It was earlier than their usual bedtime, but Slit didn’t mind. He knew the importance of getting proper rest the night before a big day. 

But then his wife reached across the bed and started touching his face. Slit liked it, but he was confused. He didn’t understand what it was supposed to be. 

“You’re bizarrely endearing and much too attractive even bald and scarred up.”

Then she was on top of him and kissing him. Kissing her felt almost as good as watching thundersticks he’d thrown blow up enemy vehicles. And he got to touch her hair and hold her against him. Slit was ready to breed, and it seemed Toast was ready too. But he wasn’t sure what would happen if they breeded when it wasn’t the right day for breeding. 

“I thought we had to wait until tomorrow,” he said.

“What?” Toast replied, like she’d forgotten the breeding schedule. 

“I’ve been counting the days and you can’t breed until tomorrow.”

She tried to pull away, and Slit instinctively tightened his hold. He could hear and feel her breathing hard. 

Her voice sounded odd and disturbing when she said, “Let go of me.”

Slit let go of her, and she quickly scrambled back to her side of the bed. 

“I guess that’s why you never tried anything,” she said. Her voice still had that disturbing tone he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t anger or sadness, it was something that sounded much worse and made him feel bad. “You really believe…” 

But she never said what it was she thought he believed, and Slit felt too unsettled to ask. This must have been one of those mood swings the Organic Mechanic had once mentioned women suffering from. Toast would be okay in the morning, hopefully. 

Thinking about breeding only made it harder to fall asleep, so Slit made himself think about Morsov instead. He imagined Morsov being told he was too mediocre for Valhalla and not being allowed in. Morsov would have to wander the Wasteland unseen forever. He could be here in the Citadel watching Slit have a wife and live in the vault like the old Immortan. 

Slit had pleasant dreams that night, though he forgot them as soon as he woke up and saw Toast. She looked tired, like she hadn’t slept well at all. Slit frowned. That was no good. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“Every damn thing in this ruin of a world we live in.”

She was in a bad mood. Slit had be extra cautious to avoid making her mad. “Anything I can fix for you?”

She buried her face in her pillow without replying. Slit was getting worried, but before he could decide what to do, Toast raised her head to look at him. 

“You know and I know that you could kill me or… whatever if you tried. You could even if you were injured. So my best chance of defending myself against you would be to simply shoot you in the head instantly.”

Slit nodded. “That’d be the best way. You’re too small and not strong enough to fight any War Boy, not even Runt. Though in a couple hundred days, you might be able to knife a few of them. But until then I’d do it for you.” 

He decided that one of the others must have done something that had made her angry or worried. She probably hadn’t mentioned it because Furiosa had taken care of it, but it was clearly still bothering her. “Who was it?”

“You. I’m not talking in hypothetical terms.” She must have remembered that he didn’t know words like ‘hypothetical’ because she explained, “I’m not talking about what if.”

Slit still didn’t understand.

“I’m telling you that if you make any move toward me, I’m going to kill you.” 

Slit was shocked. He hadn’t done anything to make her this mad. 

“I assured Furiosa that I’d handle this myself. It’s my fault. Even with Nux here and Capable explaining everything to him, I didn’t realize just how ignorant Joe had kept you War Boys. Once I understood, I should have just stopped and gotten Furiosa to handle you and kept things as painless as possible.”

“Joe called us his wives, but you can’t force someone to be your wife. None of us wanted to be his wife. We were his slaves. The best day of my life was getting to spit on his corpse.”

“You asking for a wife like you thought we were still slaves was infuriating. It was an insult and a threat. It reminded me and the others exactly what would probably happen to us if anything happened to Furiosa, and how fragile our freedom is even with Joe dead.”

Slit was trying to understand. It seemed silly when they’d gotten the best of everything there was, but he understood that Toast and the other wives thought they’d been like blood bags or treadmill rats to Immortan Joe. 

“We planned to get revenge by letting you think I was your wife and making your life as miserable as I could.”

That made no sense to Slit. Her idea of revenge was becoming his wife like he’d wanted?! 

“But you’re clearly so well adapted to being miserable, I just felt sorry for you.” 

She sighed. “I thought you were getting _better_ \- I forgot that you really believed that bullshit I made up about breeding days.”

“What bullshit?”

“Women are more fertile on certain days than on others - your Immortan always raped us on those days to increase his chances of getting his perfect son - but women are physically capable of fucking any time, same as men. I lied so you wouldn’t try to rape me. I didn’t plan on this thing lasting this long and I forgot about the lie. I didn’t realize you were counting the days.”

Slit was outraged, of course. That was twenty seven days wasted when they could have been breeding every day and even multiple times each day! “But we’re going to breed today, right?”

Toast groaned. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m not your wife and I’m not going to ‘breed’ with you.” 

“But Imperator Furiosa said you were my wife,” Slit said desperately. 

“Don’t blame her. She thought the whole plan the others and I came up with was a waste of time that would only end badly.”

“She said I could have you for my wife!”

“We are not things for her or anyone else to give away.” 

Slit couldn’t bear the thought of not living with Toast anymore. “Can’t we keep pretending you’re my wife?”

She seemed surprised. “Even if I won’t ‘breed’ with you?”

He nodded. None of the other War Boys would know that they didn’t breed. He certainly wouldn’t tell anyone. And she might breed with him eventually. She’d almost done it last night until he’d stupidly reminded her not to. 

“How can I be sure that you won’t try to force me to ‘breed’?”

“I won’t. I wouldn’t do anything that I know would make you mad at me.”

“You really aren’t angry about being tricked?”

Slit couldn’t understand why she’d expect him to be angry about getting to live like the old Immortan. It’d be rust having to go back to being a regular War Boy, but it’d been real chrome finding out what Valhalla must be like. 

He shook his head. “No. Let’s keep pretending you are my wife, please. Please.” 

She sighed and seemed to be deciding. “I have to admit, you did pretty well as a husband, especially considering all you had to go on was trying to mimic Nux.”

“If none of you are wives anymore, then how come Capable doesn’t say she isn’t Nux’s wife when we call her that? All the other War Boys think she’s Nux’s wife too.”

“I don’t know. I’ve assumed that she considers herself his wife in the real meaning of the word.”

Slit was certain he’d be able to get Toast to be his wife for real if he could just convince her to let him keep pretending she was his wife. “I’ll do anything,” he begged. 

Toast sighed. “I don’t think you understand most of what I’ve said. You can’t, or you wouldn’t be so calm and only concerned with staying in the vault.”

“You’re not going to breed with me and you’re not my wife,” Slit said. “But can’t you keep pretending you are?”

“Why would I do that?”

Slit didn’t know what to say. He suspected she wouldn’t like being reminded that she’d almost breeded with him last night, so he didn’t mention it. 

“I want to,” she said. “I want to believe that you’re not attacking me right now because you wouldn’t hurt me and not because you know I will pull the trigger of the gun I have pointed at you if you try.”

“Why would I hurt you?” Slit asked, genuinely curious. She and the other not-wives had some very odd ideas. 

She looked surprised, then she frowned. “I guess… I guess you wouldn’t intentionally try to hurt me, you just wouldn’t know that you were hurting me.”

“I told you I’m not stupid.” If he could tell when she was only just beginning to get mad, then he could definitely tell when she was hurt. 

She reached across the bed and Slit stayed very still while she touched his face. It took all his self-control not to grab her and hug her when she said, “Okay. We can keep pretending.”


	9. Chapter 9

It was just him and Nux in this storeroom. Furiosa had given Nux the key so he could get stuff he needed for the war rig. Slit was supposed to be helping him carrying the stuff. He’d been waiting for a moment like this for days. 

“You conspired against me,” he accused, punching Nux in the face as hard as he could. 

Nux fell back into a stack of engine parts and knocked them over. He grabbed a heavy-looking thing and swung it at Slit’s head. 

Slit ducked. “Not my face,” he yelled. More scars could only make him look more chrome, but he suspected Toast disagreed about that. She liked his face, so he didn’t want it changed. 

“You hit me in the face,” Nux pointed out, but he punched Slit in the gut instead of aiming for his head again. 

Slit tried to bite him.

Nux pulled him off him by his ear. “Only Capable gets to bite me now!”

Slit punched him in both sides at the same time, but he didn’t have enough room to properly swing his arms and really make it hurt. Didn’t even manage to break any of the traitor’s ribs.

“What are you even complaining about? The wives only lasted a day before they went all soft on you!”

Slit couldn’t wait to report to Toast and the Dag that Nux had called them ‘wives’. “Capable might be your wife, but the others aren’t wives,” he informed Nux.

“Oh, shut up,” Nux snapped. “I ate a pepper so I’d know exactly how badly you were suffering when they got you to eat handfuls of them, and then they didn’t even feed you one.”

Slit paused in his attempt to kick Nux’s weaker knee. “Did you cry?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Nux admitted. “It was so awful, I thought they grew it to torture people. But that didn’t seem like something they’d do, so I asked and the Dag said some people like how it makes their food taste. The Vuvalini like them. Said they’d missed them and never thought they’d get to taste it again. But they cut them up really small and don’t eat them whole. I guess that’s the right way to eat them.”

Slit resolved to eat one of the pepper things. He couldn’t have people thinking Nux and the old ferals were tougher than him. He decided he’d adequately punished Nux for his disloyalty and began gathering up the stuff they’d come for. 

Nux was still eyeing him warily, but Slit would have been insulted if he hadn’t. There was no worse disrespect than another War Boy thinking you were no threat. 

Capable and the not-wives were dismayed when they saw them that evening. Nux had stopped wearing war paint a long time ago, and Slit had recently stopped as part of his plan to get Toast to become his wife for real, so their bruises were very visible. 

“What happened?” Capable demanded. She was gently touching Nux’s bruises, apparently unaware that she was hurting him by doing that. 

Slit bit his lip to avoid being caught smirking.

“Me and Slit were just keeping in fighting shape.”

Slit wished his pretend-wife would fuss over him, but he was also pleased by that skeptical look on her face. She knew him well enough not to believe Nux’s half-truth. 

Capable took Nux away to her bedroom early after dinner. Slit suspected they were going to breed. He was jealous, but he reminded himself that he was still better off than all those other War Boys down in the barracks. 

He was just lying near the pool, doing nothing, when he caught Cheedo looking at him oddly. She stared right back at him and then she went to the piles of books and began searching through them. She brought one over to show something in it to the Dag and whispered to her.

The Dag looked at him and said, “Yes, he does.”

“What?” Toast asked.

“Your husband looks like a big cat,” the Dag replied. 

It gave Slit a thrill to hear her call him a ‘husband’ even though he knew she was saying it to tease Toast for letting him keep pretending she was his wife. 

Toast went to look at the book, and then she looked at him and smiled. “He sort of does right now, though I usually think of him more like a lizard.”

She brought the book to Slit and pointed at a photo of an animal that did look quite impressive. “That’s a tiger, a type of big cat.”

“It’s huge,” Slit said, awed. He’d heard of cats, but he’d gotten the impression that they were small creatures. The creature in the photo looked big enough to feed all the War Boys and Repair Boys. He shared this observation with the not-wives. 

Toast chuckled and Cheedo smiled, but the Dag said, “People didn’t eat tigers. Tigers ate people.”

The animal looked big enough to eat a person if it wanted, but Slit had learned not to believe everything the Dag said to him. He looked to his pretend-wife for verification. 

She nodded. “People killed them so they could wear their hides though.”

“They must have eaten the meat if they killed them,” Slit reasoned aloud. 

“People had so much food, they decided some things they wouldn’t even think of as food,” Cheedo said. “Miss Giddy refused to eat the meat Joe got for us once. She said she couldn’t bring herself to, but she wouldn’t tell us what it was.” 

Slit felt that uncomfortable feeling he felt whenever they mentioned the old History Woman. He didn’t know whether or not the not-wives and Capable knew what had happened to her, but he certainly wasn’t going to tell them. They might decide to do something stupid like banish the Organic Mechanic or have him killed. 

He dipped his fingers in the bathing pool and played with the Aqua Cola while the not-wives talked about finding another History Woman or a History Man to tell the Pups and Wretched-spawn stories. The feral old women knew old things and they told the not-wives things, but they didn’t want to be teachers. 

“Come on, you majestic beast,” Toast said to him. “Time for bed.”

Slit knew what a beast was, but he didn’t know what ‘majestic’ meant. Though Toast didn’t sound like she had when she’d called him an animal dozens of days ago. She sounded the way War Boys sounded when they talked to their favorite Pups. Slit followed her into her bedroom. 

“I have a favor to ask. Everything hurts for me at this phase of the moon cycle. Can you rub my back?”

Slit nodded eagerly. “Yeah!”

She laid face-down and Slit began to rub her back gently. 

“Lower,” she said. 

Her shirt didn’t cover her lower back. Her skin felt very soft and very smooth. She’d probably be mad at him if she knew how much he liked touching her skin. But she’d asked him to do it, so maybe she wouldn’t mind him liking it. 

“Thanks,” she said, sounding sleepy. “I owe you a favor.”

Slit went to sleep thinking of what he could ask her for. She already gave him plenty of Aqua Cola and food, and let him sleep on the bed. And he knew better than to ask her to breed with him, or to do anything else involving his cock. There was probably lots of good stuff she could give him that he didn’t even know about yet.


	10. Chapter 10

“I told you not to do it,” Toast said, but she put her arm around him and patted his back. 

Slit whimpered and tried to lower his head into the Aqua Cola to drink more of it. He’d leapt into the bathing pool, thinking it would put out the fire inside him, but it still burned. Still hurt. He was aware he was crying, but he couldn’t even be ashamed because he felt so terrible. 

The Dag handed a cup of Aqua Cola to Toast, who held it for him to drink. Toast had climbed into the bathing pool to stop him from ‘drowning himself’. She had both arms around him now and she was making a sound like War Boys sometimes made when they were trying to get very small Pups to stop crying. He couldn’t even enjoy it or be insulted by it, though, because of the burning pain in his mouth. 

Nux had stopped laughing and now he was just sitting there grinning. Capable was shaking her head, but she seemed to be trying hard not to smile. The Dag and Cheedo were very amused, but right now Slit couldn’t even care about them making fun of him. 

“There’s nothing to do but drink water and wait for the feeling to go away,” Toast said. She climbed out of the bathing pool and tugged his arm to make him follow her. 

Slit hadn’t delayed seeking relief to take off his pants and boots first, and now they were completely wet. Toast hadn’t taken off her clothes either. Despite how awful he felt, Slit decided he liked how her shirt looked when it was wet. 

“Someone get him another pair of pants, please,” she said. 

She went into her bedroom and Slit followed her because he thought he was supposed to. She turned to him and frowned, but she didn’t say anything. She just sighed. Then she took off her clothes. All her clothes, even the cloth she usually kept wrapped around her breeding parts. 

Slit stared. He’d asked to see when she’d been bleeding from there and she’d said no and glared at him. 

Now, though, she just sighed when she saw him staring. “You’re a silly child in a scary body.” 

“Am not! I’m more than nine thousand days old!” Organic had told him that he’d probably live to be ten thousand days if he didn’t get to Valhalla before then. 

Toast didn’t reply, but she smiled. She was putting on other clothes. Slit didn’t have other clothes, but it seemed like she was going to get him extra pants. Nux had extra pants and even a shirt, although he rarely wore the shirt. Slit decided that getting extra clothes and getting to see his pretend-wife without clothes was worth the agony of eating the pepper. 

“Well?” Toast said. “Aren’t you going to take off those wet pants?”

Slit quickly removed his pants and his boots. 

Toast gathered them up without looking at him. “I’ll put them in the sun to dry,” she said. 

She seemed annoyed when she came back and found him sitting on the bed, carefully drying his knives so they wouldn’t rust. 

“You could have covered yourself with the blanket, Slit.”

Slit hadn’t thought of that, and, anyway, he didn’t understand why she behaved like keeping his breeding parts concealed was so important. He hoped she’d noticed that they didn’t have any sores on them and that just thinking about breeding made his cock work. But he spread the blanket over his lap so she’d stop frowning at him. 

“I don’t even remember what I was going to do today before you decided you had to eat a pepper.”

“Maybe you were going to convince Furiosa to make me a driver.”

She laughed. “Sorry, but no. I did raise the subject with her and she said she couldn’t reassign you because you were the best lancer we had left.”

He was disappointed, but Slit decided to ask for the next best thing. “Can I be your lancer then?”

“Sure.” She smiled. “But don’t get any ideas about trying to promote yourself. Nux told us about that.”

Now that she was going to be his driver as well as his pretend-wife, Slit felt he should do something for her. Something she’d like. He’d stolen a canteen of Aqua Cola for Nux after their first time out on the road, after Nux had proven he was shine enough. But Toast had everything there was to have. 

Sometimes if you liked another War Boy enough or if he had something you wanted - that you couldn’t steal from him or fight him for - you sucked his cock. Women didn’t have cocks, of course, but he wondered whether there was something to do to their breeding part that they liked as much as any man liked getting his cock sucked. He decided to ask the Knowing not-wife. 

Toast’s eyes widened and she toppled over backwards off the bed. Slit hurried to help her up, but the blanket fell away, exposing his breeding parts. He bent to pick it up and held it over his groin while he pulled Toast up with his other hand. 

“Of all the things you’ve said, that was something I wasn’t expecting to hear!”

Capable knocked on the door even though it was wide open. “Am I interrupting? I brought a clean pair of pants that should fit.”

Slit eagerly accepted his new pants. This pair was almost new; it only had one small patch. 

“Slit just inquired how to... er, pleasure me.”

Capable’s eyes widened too. But then instead of falling over, she smiled, and Slit was forced to conclude that Nux must have figured it out. He was smarter than Slit had thought. 

“Oh, I’ll leave you two alone then.”

“No, wait,” Toast called, but Capable hurried from the room and closed the door behind her. 

Slit admired the fit of his new pants and began putting on his belts while he waited for Toast to answer his question.

“Well, uh, there is an act that gives women as much sexual pleasure as men get from blowjobs. Though I’m not saying that you can do this to me. It was… uh, very kind of you to offer, I suppose. But I’m not comfortable accepting an offer like that at this time.”

She kept rubbing the back of her neck and she had a weird look on her face. Slit suspected that her cheeks would have turned red if her skin had been his color. 

“Are you sure? I’d be super shine at it once I learned how to do it.”

“I...uh…” She swallowed. “I’m sure you would be, Slit, but no, thank you.”

It was her loss, yet Slit felt disappointed for no reason. “You coming to supervise the Pups with me?”

“I need some time alone to recover from all this. See you tonight.”

He’d noticed that Nux and Capable kissed each other on the cheek whenever one of them was about to leave the other and go some place else. But Capable was Nux’s real wife and Toast was only his pretend-wife, so Slit didn’t think he should try to kiss her good-bye. He did turn back to look at her before he closed the door though. He liked how she looked lying like that on the bed. “See you tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the type of pepper I had in mind: http://www.cayennediane.com/peppers/wiri-wiri/


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented on the previous chapter. It was much appreciated. :D

“Are you awake?”

Slit wasn’t fully awake, but he wasn’t yet asleep either. “Kinda.”

“Do you want to cuddle? Just cuddling, nothing more.”

“Yeah!” Slit agreed eagerly. Then he had to ask, “What’s cuddling?”

He heard Toast laugh softly, and then she shifted over to his side of the bed. She put her head on his shoulder and slung an arm across his chest. Slit decided that cuddling must be another word for breeding. He waited for her to move on to the next step in the breeding process. 

“This is cuddling,” she said. “You can put your arms around me if you want.”

Slit quickly wrapped both arms around her. When she didn’t give him any further instructions, Slit was forced to conclude that cuddling wasn’t another word for breeding. “Is this like ‘snuggling’?” he asked.

She gave another soft laugh. “Yes, Slit, it’s exactly like snuggling.”

Slit didn’t understand the purpose of cuddling or snuggling, but he was afraid that if he asked, she’d change her mind about cuddling with him. It felt nice, even though they weren’t actually doing anything. He wondered how long they were going to cuddle. 

“I don’t know what to do. I can’t just keep you like this indefinitely. It’s not fair to anybody. I like having you around though. There’s never a dull moment with you. And it is tempting to just do it...” 

He could feel her fingers tracing the scarifications on his stomach while she talked.

“I want to.” She sighed. “But I need you to be a person.”

“I am a person,” Slit insisted. He was offended that she kept saying he wasn’t a person when she was always saying that the Wretched and the other filth out in the Wasteland were people. He was more of a person than they were! He wondered whether it was because she used to be a feral. 

She kissed his cheek. “Yes, you are, but I don’t think you fully understand what that means.”

“You want me to be nice to people who aren’t not-wives, Capable, other War Boys, or War Pups.”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe if you do it without understanding why, then eventually you’ll realize.”

Realize what? But Slit didn’t want to continue the conversation. It was almost ruining the cuddling. She wanted him to act nice to useless people? Slit could do that. He’d hate it, but he could do it. It couldn’t be any worse than lancing alongside Morsov without being allowed to push him under the wheels of a Buzzard vehicle. 

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be nice to everyone, even the most rusted, useless piece of filth.”

“Good.” She kissed his cheek again and stroked the scar on his other cheek. 

She fell asleep while they were still cuddling, and Slit certainly wasn’t going to push her back to her side of the bed. It was getting uncomfortable having her head on his shoulder like that though, so he carefully eased her off of him and turned onto his side. But he quickly put an arm around her to hold her against him so they could keep cuddling. It was weird and he still didn’t understand the point of it, but he’d decided he liked it. And Nux and Capable did it, so Toast doing it with him had to mean he was closer to her becoming his wife for real. Cuddling was definitely a good thing. 

 

Slit was in a good mood. He’d awoken still cuddled with Toast, with her looking at him strangely and touching his face. He decided to waste no time in beginning his mission. The sooner he was nice to Wretched, the sooner Toast would breed with him.

He saw two female children among the Wretched who were loitering in the chow hall. He’d known that female children had to exist, but Slit had never seen them up close before or interacted with them. He decided that it would be nice to teach them how to fight. 

He tucked one under each arm and carried them off, ignoring the shouts of the Wretched. The children didn’t giggle like Pups did when he carried them like this, but they didn’t scream or struggle either. Their passivity was disturbing; he could have been taking them to be ground into rations. 

“You’re going to be War Pups,” he said to them, depositing them outside the pups’ cavern. 

They clung to each other, but the braver one spoke up. “But we’re girls. Citadel only takes boys for war training.”

His pretend-wife was a female and she wanted to do war. “Doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “You’re War Pups now.”

Slit pushed them into the den and told the pups to teach them the basics of being a War Pup. Then he went off to look for more people to be nice to. 

He found some treadmill rats - workers, he corrected himself - arguing. One of them was shoving the other one and the one getting shoved was just taking it. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Slit demanded. “Shove him back!”

“He’s the foreman,” the weak worker said feebly. 

“So? You’re never going to get anything if you don’t fight for it.”

“Yeah,” agreed one of the other workers who’d been watching. 

The weak worker looked from Slit to his fellow workers and then to the foreman. He drew back his arm and swung wildly. 

Slit watched them fight. They were terrible at fighting, but it was a start. 

He was nice to several more people before he decided he’d been nice enough for one day. He was assembling thundersticks when Imperator Furiosa and his wife came striding towards him, looking very angry. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Furiosa demanded. 

“Explain yourself,” his wife said. She’d put her hands on her hips and was glaring at him. 

“What?” Slit asked, confused.

“You’ve abducted children, incited brawls, and damaged Citadel property all in one morning!”

“Didn’t do none of that! I’ve been being nice and helping people all day!”

“Slit-” Furiosa started to shout, but Toast touched her shoulder.

“I think I know what happened, and it’s kind of my fault,” Toast said. “Let me talk to him.”

Furiosa stared silently at Toast, then exhaled loudly. “Fine, but make sure he understands it’d better not happen again.” 

“What’s the fuss about?” Slit asked.

His wife started banging her head into his chest the way Nux smashed his head into the floor or the wall when he was mad at himself. Slit’s chest was almost as hard as rock and he didn’t want Toast to hurt herself, so he grabbed her head with both hands. 

“What am I going to do with you?” she asked.

She’d said that before. Slit wanted to suggest they breed, but he didn’t want to make her mad at him. So he said, “We could cuddle.” 

Toast gave a strange laugh. “You’re dangerous and not just in the way I expected.”

Slit wasn’t sure exactly what she meant, but it was a wonderful compliment all the same. “You’re pretty dangerous too,” he told her. 

She was staring up at him. “Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I’ve made too big a deal about it. It’s just sex, after all. I want to, and you want to, and that should be enough.” 

“You mean-” Slit started to ask, delighted. But she’d grabbed him around the neck and was pressing down, and he bent his head - and she started kissing him. 

Slit picked her up and held her level with him so he wouldn’t have to bend, and she wrapped her legs around him. It was really going to happen! She was going to breed with him!


	12. Chapter 12

Slit woke up feeling the best he’d ever felt. He was even happier than he’d been the first time he did war. His wife - his wife for real now, not just pretend - was still asleep. Slit nuzzled the curve where her neck met her shoulder. He ran his hand up her thigh, over her hip, and across her stomach to her breasts. He was touching them how she liked when she woke up. 

“No,” she murmured. “I’m still tired.”

True, they’d breeded three times yesterday, plus she’d taught him how to use his mouth on her breeding part. But that was yesterday. Slit was ready to breed again today. 

“But you just woke up, you can’t be tired.”

“I only woke up because someone was disturbing my rest.” She turned to face him and smiled. “Good morning.”

It was. It was the best morning, but it could be even better. He tried to kiss Toast. 

She kissed him back briefly, before pulling away. “I mean it. Not now and probably not at all today. I’m going to be sore later.”

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, horrified. He'd tried to be gentle, but then she'd told him harder and he'd forgotten. 

She touched his face. “No, darling. You know how muscles ache when you use them a lot after a long time of not using them?”

He nodded. He was always telling the Repair Boys they’d have an easier time if they did their calisthenics every day like they were supposed to. 

“Well, that’s true of what you call ‘breeding parts’ too.”

“Oh.” Slit thought about it. The only relief for sore muscles was getting somebody to rub them. “You want me to rub it?”

Toast laughed. “Maybe tonight.” She glanced at his breeding part and touched it lightly. “Maybe tonight I’ll return the favor.” 

Slit was trying to think of a reason why they shouldn’t wait until tonight, when there was a knock on the door. 

Toast grabbed the blanket from the foot of the bed and spread it over both of them. “Come in,” she called. 

It was Capable. “You’re usually up earlier than this. I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“Everything’s fine. I was up late last night, that’s all.”

“I know,” Capable replied. “We heard.” 

Toast covered her face with her hands. “Oh, no.”

Slit didn’t mind that Capable and Nux and the not-wives had heard him and his wife breeding. He just wished the other War Boys could have heard too. He wondered if Toast would agree to breeding where they could hear. He was pretty shine at breeding and he wanted everybody to know.

“Cheedo was a little worried about all the noise, but I explained that you two were just louder than Nux and I and that there wasn’t anything bad happening.”

“The Dag is never going to let me live this down,” Toast said. She took her hands away from her face. “Thank you, Capable.”

Capable nodded and gave them a smile that was different from her usual smiles. “I’m heading out and everyone else is already gone. Feel free to make as much noise as you want.”

Toast groaned. 

Capable laughed and closed the door behind her. 

Toast turned to him. “I hope you’re happy. I’m going to be teased mercilessly.”

“I’m happy. Never been so happy.”

She stopped trying to glare at him and got a strange look on her face. She put her hand on his cheek. “I’m happy too, Slit.”

For a moment Slit thought they were going to do sex stuff. But then Toast climbed out of bed. “Come on,” she said. “We both need a bath.”

Slit’s baths had always been late in the afternoon, after the Aqua Cola had been warmed all day by the sun coming in through the glass walls. He yelped as he discovered that the bathing pool was cold in the morning. 

His wife laughed at him. “That should cool your desire to ‘breed’.”

But she helped him bathe and let him help her bathe, and Slit forgot how cold the Aqua Cola was. 

“You’re insatiable,” she told him. 

Slit didn’t know that word and she was explaining it to him when one of the feral old women entered the vault. 

“Mel,” Toast said. “Have you come to tease me too?”

The old feral shook her head. “A trader’s rolled up below. Furiosa wants you to check it out.”

“Why can’t Furiosa go herself?” Slit complained, once the old feral had left. 

“I think she wants me to learn how to handle things,” Toast said. “I am sort of her second in command.”

“You are?!” Slit hadn’t known this. He was thrilled. If Furiosa died, his wife would be in charge of the Citadel. It’d be almost as great as being in charge himself. 

Toast snapped her gun holster onto her belt and attached the knife he’d given her to the other side. “You can come with me, but don’t start trouble. In fact, you probably shouldn’t talk. Just stand beside me and look scary.” 

While Toast went to speak with Furiosa, Slit hurried down to the barracks and got Diesel to help him apply war paint. Then he carefully smeared engine grease around his eyes and on his forehead. It felt good to look like a proper War Boy again. He was ready for war. 

Toast was waiting for him at the platform. “I’d forgotten how terrifying you look like that.”

Slit would have taken that as a compliment from anyone else, but he knew his wife liked how he looked unpainted. “You said to look scary.”

“I did, and you do. Let’s do this.”

The trader was a man who looked old enough to have been grown before the world turned into the wasteland. Mostly he had the same sort of scraps War Boys could scavenge for themselves, but he also had some food things, including a large bag of what he called ‘pistachio nuts’. 

“Where did you get these?” Toast asked him. The trader had given her one to try for free. 

“That’s a secret, young lady. Can’t put myself out of business or endanger my supplier.”

Slit poked at the rusted scraps, and every time the trader looked away from him, he stole a nut. He wanted one, and it was only right to get one for his wife too, and Nux might like one, and Capable, and the Dag and Cheedo. And there was that one War Pup who always came to watch him practice lancing even back when everyone was being stupid over mediocre Morsov. And he owed Diesel. 

By the time Toast and the trader had concluded their business, Slit had stolen almost a dozen nuts. 

“We could make him tell us where he got the pistachio things,” he said to Toast as the platform carried them back up. He knew she wouldn’t agree, but it had to be said. 

“We could, but he’d never come back and other traders would hear about it and avoid the Citadel.”

That made sense.

“I’m going to get the water I promised him and talk to the Repair Boys about getting his van running like new. I’ll see you tonight.” 

Slit lowered his head expectantly. Now that they were husband-and-wife for real, they had to kiss good-bye. 

Toast kissed him quickly and walked away smiling. Slit watched her until she was out of sight, basking in the jealousy of the platform guards and treadmill workers. Then he set off to find Nux. He had to show him the pistachio nut, and more importantly, discuss breeding tips - preferably where the other War Boys could overhear.


	13. Chapter 13

Even though he wasn’t allowed to be nice anymore, Slit figured Toast would want him to protect Cheedo. So when he saw her standing there, looking confused, while a couple of War Boys examined her hands, he strode towards them.

“What are you doing? Get your hands off her.”

“It’s okay,” Cheedo said. “They asked and I said they could.”

“Could what?”

“We’re measuring,” Bones said. 

“Can’t find a ring chrome enough for a wife, so we’re going to make our own,” Runt added. 

“She’s not a wife,” Slit corrected, surprised that Cheedo didn’t correct them herself. 

“Not yet,” Bones replied. “Old John said you had to offer a woman a ring when you ask her to be your wife.”

“You’re talking to Wretched filth?! And taking advice from them?!”

“I think it’s wonderful,” Cheedo said, smiling, and Slit knew Bones and Runt wouldn’t care what he thought about them speaking with Wretched. 

He complained about this state of affairs to Nux, though he didn’t expect Nux to share his dismay. And, true enough, Nux was merely curious.

“A ring? What sort of ring? Capable’s never told me anything about a ring.”

“A ring to look chrome on her finger.” Slit’s wife had never said anything about a ring to him either. 

“Stop standing around and help me change this tire.”

Slit scowled at him. He was pretty sure he and Nux were the same rank now, being that they were both husbands. Only his driver/wife and Imperator Furiosa could order him about. But he helped so he could remind Nux about it later whenever he needed Nux’s help. And because he was bored.

He hadn’t done war in dozens of days. There was only so much training and practicing he could do before he started itching to throw a real thunderstick and watch enemies die. But the Buzzards and other Wasteland filth were staying out of the Citadel’s territory and Imperator Furiosa wasn’t sending War Boys to raid their territories.

Life would have been unbearable if not for breeding with his wife. After they’d finished breeding one night, he confided to her how much he missed war. 

“You poor thing,” she said, and she kissed his cheek. 

“It’d be so chrome to do war with you,” he said wistfully. They hadn’t encountered anyone to do war against any of the times they’d gone out on the road.

“Hmm,” she said. “But you do realize that you or I might get hurt or even killed?”

“Wouldn’t let you get hurt or killed,” Slit assured her. 

“What about you? If you get hurt or killed, you won’t be able to keep me from getting hurt or killed.”

“I won’t let myself get killed either.” He hesitated, then decided to share something he hadn’t even told Nux. “Ever since Organic said I could live to be ten thousand days old, I don’t want to die before then.”

He could feel her stroking his scalp and she kissed his cheek again. “That’s a good goal and it’s reassuring to know.”

Slit dreamt about doing war that night. Toast was fanging it through the desert and he was throwing thundersticks as fast as he could, watching vehicle after vehicle explode and flip over. And when the filth came crawling out of their wrecked vehicles, Toast shot them.

He woke up feeling happy. He was wondering whether to tell Toast about his dream when he saw the blood. He was terrified with worry for moment, then he remembered what it was. He’d been looking forward to this since Toast became his real wife. Slit nudged her legs apart and stuck his face between them. 

It didn’t smell like blood, but it didn’t smell like her usual scent either. Slit was tasting it when she woke up. 

She murmured appreciatively, then she seemed to realize she was bleeding and she tried to shove him away. “Stop that.”

“Why?” He was confused by how upset she seemed. “You like it.”

“Not now when I’m all bloody. You can’t. It’s gross.”

“Nux does it. He says it’s even more chrome when Capable’s bleeding.”

Toast made an unpleasant face. “I didn’t need to know that.”

Slit tried to get his head back between her legs, but she kicked him lightly. He gave her a wounded look. He didn’t understand why she’d rather let the blood go to waste than let him lick it up. 

“We are not doing that.” 

“Why not?”

“People don’t do that.”

“Nux and Capable do it.”

“Capable and Nux are perverts,” she grumbled. She got out of bed and poured Aqua Cola from the jug she kept in her room. 

Slit watched her wipe up the blood and wrap that cloth around her hips and between her legs. She pulled on her pants and shirt, and then put her hands on her hips and just looked at him.

“Are you going to get up?”

“No.”

“Stop sulking.”

Slit turned away and closed his eyes and pretended he was going back to sleep. He felt Toast climb onto the bed and she patted his shoulder. 

“Come on, my silly War Boy. It’s a big day.”

He was curious despite himself. “Why? What’s happening?”

“Furiosa is going to Gas Town.”

“But Nux drives the rig now.”

“She’s heard things that made her want to check out the situation there for herself.”

Slit nearly sprang out of bed in excitement as he realized what this meant. “You’ll be in charge of the whole Citadel while she’s gone!”

“Yes. It’s a terrifying responsibility.”

“It’s the best thing ever!” This might be even better than breeding or doing war. The Citadel would be his wife’s, which almost made it his. This was more chrome than anything he’d ever imagined. 

Toast was smiling as she watched him get dressed. Slit decided he’d try again later to feast on her; she might change her mind. 

Usually whenever Slit watched a convoy roll out without him, he felt unhappy about not being part of it. A War Boy’s place was on the road, ready to do war if not actually doing war. But not today. Today he watched Nux and Imperator Furiosa drive off with half the other War Boys, and he felt positively gleeful. 

“It’s all yours,” he said to his wife. He squeezed her tight and kissed the top of her head. 

“Try not to sound like you don’t want Furiosa to come back,” Toast replied, struggling to break free from his embrace. “It makes me consider divorce.”

Slit released her. Immortan Joe had divorced wives for displeasing him and cast them down among the Wretched. The Wretched didn’t exist like they used to, so he probably wouldn’t be cast down. He’d probably just have to go back to the barracks and be a regular War Boy again. 

Toast sighed. “Don’t look so upset, Slit. I was joking.”

He hated how he sounded when he asked, “So you wouldn’t really divorce me?”

“Not unless you did something terrible. More terrible than your usual shenanigans, that is. Something intentionally terrible.”

She wrapped her arms around his middle and pressed her face against his chest. Slit hugged her back and they stood there cuddling for a long time. Finally she ended it and told him, “Help me keep everybody in line and make sure nobody acts up because Furiosa isn’t here.”

Slit decided he needed war paint. None of the War Boys he liked enough to permit to touch him were around, so he got some Pups to help him. The girl pups were among them. They weren’t real War Pups - they slept with their Wretched parents instead of in the den with the others. But they played and trained with the boy pups and learned to read and write with them, and helped in the repair bays, because Furiosa and his wife had decided that all the children should have the same ‘education’. 

Once he was painted and looking properly intimidating, Slit methodically inspected every part of the Citadel, making sure that no one was even thinking about challenging his wife’s authority. He reported this to her when he joined her for the mid-day meal. 

“You see the irony in this, don’t you, my sisters?” said the Dag, who’d descended from the green early. Probably in case anyone caused trouble and she needed to shred them with her teeth like Nux swore she’d tried to do to him. 

“I do,” replied Toast. 

“Yes,” said Cheedo.

Capable nodded, smiling. 

“What’s ‘irony’?” Slit asked. 

“When something’s the opposite of what it should be. It can be amusing when you appreciate it,” the Dag explained, looking quite amused herself. 

Slit understood what she’d said, but not what it was they were talking about to begin with. “What irony?” he asked. “I don’t see any irony.”

His wife smiled at him. “The irony is you would probably have been the biggest troublemaker today if you and I weren’t together.”

Slit started to deny it, but then he realized it was true. If it wasn’t his wife in charge, he’d probably have seized the opportunity provided by Furiosa’s absence to try to take control of the Citadel himself. 

“It’s a good thing we decided to teach him instead of punishing him,” the Dag said. She didn’t look amused anymore. She looked very serious. 

Capable touched Slit’s shoulder. “See, Slit? Being kind might help you later.”

She was wrong about that. As kind as she and Cheedo and sometimes the Dag were, Slit would still take the Citadel away from them if they were in charge. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt them, of course, but he wouldn’t let them be in charge. They didn’t even want to learn how to do war. 

It was a pretty good day and Slit thought it was getting better when the older War Pup on lookout duty called, “Lone road warrior approaching!”

“He’s probably come to steal, or to destroy those ‘crop bed’ things they’re building down there. Or carry someone off to be his slave,” Slit said, hoping Toast would shoot the rider or let him shoot him.

She snorted. “Nice try.” She raised the binoculars and peered through them. Then she shrieked. 

Slit stared at her. 

“It’s Max!” she shouted happily. She grabbed one of the pups and told him to go get her sisters. Then she ordered the platform guards to let the rider and his motorcycle come up into the Citadel. 

Slit was wondering who the hell Max was, but Toast didn’t seem to hear him when he asked. She was very excited, like this Max was bringing all sorts of shiny and chrome things for her. But when the Max person came up, Slit recognized him. It was Nux’s old blood bag, the psychotic feral. 

Slit hissed at him.


	14. Chapter 14

The psychotic feral looked shock to see Slit. “My car,” he said.

Clearly he was stupid as well as psychotic. Slit pointed at his motorcyle. “That’s a bike, not a car.”

The psychotic feral looked annoyed. “I meant my car you were driving when you should have died.”

Oh, yeah. Razor Cola had been built from the car some other War Boys had captured when they’d captured this feral. 

“Wasn’t your car anymore.” 

Slit was still sad that such a chrome car had ended up crushed and scorched into an unrecognizable heap. It should have taken him to Valhalla, but somehow he’d slithered out at the last second. He didn’t like to remember being a coward. He’d told people that a now dead War Boy had pulled him out. 

The psychotic feral was glaring at him. “Where is it?”

“Scrap heap.”

“We can give you another car,” Toast said to the psychotic feral. “It’s the least we can do.”

Slit stared at her in horrified disbelief. Furiosa wouldn’t let him drive, but they were going to just give a car to this feral?!

“Furiosa?” the psychotic feral asked. 

“She’s gone to Gas Town. She should be back soon.”

Capable and Cheedo came running. For a moment Slit thought they were going to try to hug the feral, but they stopped short of that. They were grinning like they’d never been so happy to see anyone. 

“Max!” Capable said. “Did Toast tell you? Nux survived!”

The psychotic feral seemed pleased by that. “He’s with Furiosa?”

Toast and Capable and Cheedo all nodded.

“Max!” the Dag called breathlessly. She was breathing hard, like she’d ran all the way down from the green. 

The psychotic feral didn’t smile, but he looked like he almost had. “Good. Glad everything’s good here.”

“I’ll get you some water and food,” Capable said. 

“You can have a bath if you want one,” Toast said. “And we’ll get your clothes washed.”

“My bike,” he said.

“It’ll be here safe,” Toast assured him. “I’ll make sure no one touches it.”

She turned to Slit. “Tell the others not to touch it. Not even if they think they can make it more ‘chrome’.”

She didn’t even wait for Slit to protest treating the psychotic feral like an immortan. She and the others led him away.

Slit felt like kicking everyone in his way. He almost kicked a treadmill rat, but then he remembered his wife might find out and be mad at him. He wanted to instruct the Repair Boys to take the feral’s bike apart, but he glumly relayed his wife’s orders. 

She apparently hadn’t considered that one of her Wretched might steal it, though, so as much as Slit wanted to kick the rusted bike off the cliff, he went back and ordered the platform guards to guard it. 

He was afraid he’d find the psychotic feral in the bathing pool when he went to the vault, but only Capable and the Dag and Cheedo were there. They were talking excitedly about the psychotic feral and Imperator Furiosa. Slit was horrified by what they were saying.

“The Imperator’s not going to breed with a feral!” That was something he might have said to rile up the old war rig crew, but Slit refused to believe that Furiosa would actually breed with a psychotic feral. 

“You have to stop calling people feral, Slit,” Capable said. 

“Max saved Furiosa and all of us. He’s a hero,” Cheedo said. 

The Dag nodded. “And he’s handsome.”

They all started giggling. 

“He’s psychotic,” Slit informed them. “It took a dozen War Boys to subdue him. Probably not even Rictus could have controlled him. He’s some kind of freak.”

They didn’t react like Slit expected. They looked impressed. 

“So you’re telling us he’s strong too?” the Dag said.

Slit scowled at her, but refused to utter another word about the feral. 

His wife entered the vault. “I put Max in the room that used to be the Prime Imperator’s room,” she said. 

“Joe’s room is better,” the Dag said. “And it wouldn’t bother him like it does us.”

“Yes, but the room I gave him is closer to Furiosa’s.”

They all smiled.

“You don’t think the Imperator’s going to breed with him too, do you?” Slit demanded. 

Toast got a look she usually only got when they were going to breed. “He’s quite a man. If he hadn’t so obviously fallen in love with Furiosa, I might have tried something myself.”

Slit was devastated. His wife wanted to breed with the psychotic feral. He felt like he’d felt back in the canyon when he first heard Immortan Joe was dead. He just sat there. 

When he heard the drums announcing the rig’s return, he followed Toast and Capable and the not-wives silently. They went to collect the feral, telling him Furiosa was back and taking him to greet her. 

But when the feral and Furiosa saw each other, they just stared at each other with strange looks on their faces. 

Then Nux was hugging the psychotic feral before the feral could stop him. He shouted, “Blood bag!”

“His name is Max,” Capable told Nux gently. 

“Max,” Nux pronounced, like it was the most shine name instead of the stupid name it really was.

The psychotic feral freed himself from Nux, but he rubbed his head like Nux was a pup he liked. 

Dinner that night was terrible. Furiosa, the feral old women, and the psychotic feral all came to the vault, and Nux and the wives and not-wives talked to them excitedly for what felt like hours. Slit felt terrible, like he was getting sick. 

He laid his head in his wife’s lap like he usually did after dinner, but Toast didn’t rub his head like she usually did. She didn’t seem to even notice him. 

The psychotic feral noticed him though. He was staring at Slit and he had both eyebrows raised. Slit saw Imperator Furiosa lean over and whisper something to him. His expression changed like she’d told him something disgusting. He was staring at Toast now.

Slit didn’t like him looking at his wife. He hissed at him.

Toast hit his shoulder. “Stop that.”

“He kicked me in my face a bunch of times,” Slit told her. She liked his face, so surely she’d be mad at the psychotic feral for trying to damage it. 

“You tried to cut off my head!” the feral said, more loudly than he’d spoken until now.

Everyone was looking at Slit like he was a Buzzard.

“You did?” Nux demanded. “I was hooked up to him, getting blood, you asshole!”

“And you tried to kill me with my own car,” the psychotic feral said loudly. He looked like he was about to try to shred Slit. 

Slit started to unsheath a knife, but his wife grabbed his arm. 

“No,” she said sternly. 

“Everyone’s forgiven for what they did before,” Furiosa said. “Everyone,” she repeated, like she was reminding people Slit was part of “everyone.”

They started talking about something else then. Toast had both arms around him, but it didn’t feel like cuddling. It felt like she was holding him back from trying to fight the feral. 

And when they went to bed, she stayed on her side of the bed. Slit was afraid to try to breed with her or even to cuddle. 

“Why’d you try to kill him?” she asked.

Slit shrugged, then realized she couldn’t see it in the dark. “I don’t know. Felt like it.”

“You make me want to make you sleep on the floor.”

Slit started to slide off the bed, but Toast grabbed him. 

“No,” she said. “Don’t do that. It’ll only make me feel sorry for you and I don’t want to.”


	15. Chapter 15

It’d only been three days, but everything had become about the psychotic feral. The Citadel was rife with rumors. Some people were saying he was there to challenge Furiosa, while others insisted Furiosa was going to marry him and make him co-ruler. And some people claimed he’d come for Furiosa’s help in waging war and taking over Gas Town or the Bullet Farm. 

That last rumor was popular among War Boys who’d listened to Nux telling the story of how Max had single-handedly killed the Bullet Farmer and his boys and brought back all their guns and bullets. Nux didn’t seem to tire of telling the stupid story. He told it over and over. 

The other War Boys and Repair Boys and Pups and even Wretched didn’t seem to tire of hearing it either. They kept asking Nux about it. Other War Boys had even started telling their own stories about the psychotic feral’s exploits on Fury Road. One claimed to have seen him kill the People Eater, and another said he’d fought and beaten Rictus with his bare hands. 

Slit couldn’t escape hearing about the stupid feral no matter where he went. In the vault, the wives and not-wives kept speculating on whether or not Furiosa was breeding with him yet and talking about how perfect they were for each other. In the repair bays, it seemed everybody had abandoned their other work to help Nux build a car for him. 

Even supervising the War Pups, Slit had to suffer watching them play “Road Warrior Max” and taking turns pretending to single-handedly beat every other filth in the wasteland. He tried to put a stop to that by making them work on their balance atop narrow beams placed high up - that now had a mattress under it, thanks to his wife - but they only switched to discussing the story of how the psychotic feral had knocked a polecat off his pole. 

 

“This is going to be the most chrome pursuit vehicle ever,” Nux said happily, surveying the car and wiping his hands clean of grease. 

Slit couldn’t stand it anymore. Nux was to blame for a lot of the worship of the psychotic feral. He’d credited the feral’s high octane blood for helping him survive Fury Road, and Slit had heard some idiot War Boys wondering aloud whether the feral would agree to give them a top-up. 

He got right up in Nux’s face. “You’re acting like that filth is the new Immortan!” he accused.

Nux bumped his forehead into Slit’s threateningly. “You’re just jealous, Slit.”

Slit hissed. Nux was probably expecting him to tackle him or take a swing at him. Instead Slit sank his teeth into Nux’s shoulder and bit him hard. 

“Ow!” Nux exclaimed. He punched Slit in the side of the head. “I told you not to bite me anymore!”

Slit delivered the message he’d come to deliver. “Your wife says to tell you not to miss dinner again. She says the car can wait.”

He returned to the vault without waiting for Nux. Thankfully the psychotic feral hadn’t come to eat with them again. But he was still all they talked about. Tonight they were speculating about where he’d come from and what had happened to him that made him keep wandering the wasteland instead of settling in the Citadel like he’d “earned.” 

Toast stroked his scalp with her fingernails when he put his head in her lap, but after a few moments, she seemed to forget he was there and stopped. Slit nudged her hand with his head, trying to get her to resume touching him. She rubbed his head, but then she forgot about him again. 

She was telling the others about the information the psychotic feral had given her and Furiosa to help them update the Citadel’s maps. It sounded like he’d gotten to do war all over the whole wasteland. It wasn’t fair. 

“ _He_ kills people and you still like _him_ ,” Slit complained, when they were alone in Toast’s room. 

She gave him a look he didn’t understand before she turned off the lamp. “He does what he has to do to survive. He doesn’t do it for fun.”

Slit would have hissed at her if she wasn’t his wife. He settled for pointedly turning his back to her and not talking to her. 

He felt her stroking his back. Maybe she wanted to breed. But he realized he was so unhappy about the psychotic feral taking over everything that he didn’t even feel like breeding. 

“I’m not giving up on you, but I don’t know how to un-teach you what Joe taught you. I thought having you listen to people tell their stories would make you understand, but it doesn’t seem to have worked.” 

“Then I hoped that you’d learn from example by living up here with us, but…” 

She sighed and didn’t say anything else. 

Slit had terrible dreams that night. He dreamt that the Gigahorse hadn’t been dismantled and used as parts to make other cars, that it was whole and the psychotic feral was driving it. The psychotic feral was the new Immortan and he had Slit’s wife and Nux’s wife and the not-wives as his wives while Slit was chained to the treadmill and forced to be a treadmill rat. Nux and the other War Boys were treadmill rats too, but they were smiling and acting like it was fun. 

It was still dark when he woke up, but Slit didn’t want to stay in bed and dream more awful dreams. 

Toast stirred when he got out of bed, but she seemed to assume he was just going to the latrine and went back to sleep without saying anything. Slit stood there watching her, though he could only see the vague outline of her. Everything had been perfect before that filthy psychotic feral showed up. 

He’d try to kill him if he wasn’t certain Toast would divorce him. And Furiosa would kill him. 

Slit left the vault and wandered up to the green. There was a guard on duty to keep people from damaging the ‘plants’ or stealing, but he let Slit go up because Slit was a husband. Even though his wife liked the psychotic feral more than she liked him, he thought mournfully. 

There was a patch of tiny green things that the Dag called “grass” and seemed to keep solely for use as her bed when she slept up here. Slit rolled around on it, but even that wasn’t as enjoyable as it usually was. The psychotic feral had ruined his life and there wasn’t anything he was allowed to do about it. 

He entertained fantasies of the feral being caged and used as a blood bag again, but he knew it’d never happen now. The best he could hope for was the wives and not-wives changing their minds and making Furiosa exile the feral from the Citadel. 

Slit jumped up. That was it. He had to find out something about the feral that would make Toast and the others not like him anymore. 

He positioned himself in the shadows near the Prime Imperator’s quarters and waited for the feral. When the feral left the room, Slit followed him. 

He stalked the psychotic feral for hours. 

The feral visited his new car and almost smiled at Nux. He went up to the green and came back down with a whole ‘carrot’ thing that he took small bites from. As much as Slit wanted to believe he’d stolen it and wanted to accuse him of theft, he knew the Dag had probably given it to him. 

The feral and Furiosa stood out in the open and talked, and while Slit couldn’t hear much from where he was hidden, it didn’t seem like they were saying any of the things the wives and not-wives wanted them to say. Slit didn’t hear the word ‘love’ - he only heard words like ‘growth’ and ‘irrigation’ and ‘water table’. 

Slit was disappointed he hadn’t seen the feral kick a pup or anything. But his hope was renewed when he followed the feral down to where the pump penetrated the ground to draw up Aqua Cola. The psychotic feral had no business being here. Maybe he was up to something no good. 

Slit had only been down here a couple of times before. It was dark and no one was really supposed to come here except the Repair Boys who maintained the pumps. The feral headed into a cavern that Slit hadn’t known existed. It sloped downwards and there was Aqua Cola on the ground.

He heard a splash and then he heard the psychotic feral curse. Slit hurried to see what had happened. 

The ground seemed to disappear and Slit found himself in Aqua Cola. A lot of it. It wasn’t pleasant like the bathing pool. There was too much of it and it was very cold and it was filling his nose. It hurt and, somehow, it felt like it was burning the inside of his throat. He opened his mouth to scream, but Aqua Cola rushed in and it got worse. 

Slit realized he was dying.


	16. Chapter 16

The psychotic feral was kissing him.

This couldn’t be Valhalla. He wasn’t dead after all. 

Slit wanted to shove the feral away, but his muscles wouldn’t obey him. He managed to twist his head aside though. He tried to yell at the feral, but he only coughed.

“Should’ve let you die,” the psychotic feral grumbled. He grabbed Slit. 

To Slit’s horror, he found himself too physically weak to fend off the feral. The feral slung him across his shoulders and carried him off. Not that Slit wanted to stay in that dark, cold pit of Aqua Cola, but the feral could be taking him somewhere worse. 

“Heavy,” the feral grunted. “Pity you aren’t the one wasting away.”

They attracted everyone’s attention as the feral carried him past more populated parts of the Citadel, and a crowd began following them. Slit tried to shout at the gawking Repair Boys to do something, but he only managed to cough more. 

At least he recognized where the feral was taking him. Though Slit almost wished he’d flung him off the cliff instead when the feral carried him into the vault. He didn’t want the wives and not-wives to see him looking like booty the feral had captured. 

They didn’t seem to realize how humiliating it was though. And they didn’t look amused, only shocked.

“What happened?” Capable asked. 

Toast didn’t say anything, she just hurried towards them, and when the feral set him down, she pulled his head into her lap. She was touching him like she was examining him and she looked very worried. 

Slit closed his eyes.

“He drowned,” the feral said.

“ _Drowned_?” his wife asked. 

“Impossible,” someone said. 

“There’s a cave where water seeped in and formed a small lake. He was following me and he fell in. I pulled him out.”

“What happened?” asked Imperator Furiosa. She must have just gotten here. 

“Toast’s pet almost died,” replied a voice Slit didn’t recognize.

“Don’t call him that!” Toast said angrily. 

“Sorry. I didn’t realize you cared about him.”

“Of course I care about him.” 

Slit felt her kissing his forehead and then all over his face. 

“I love the ridiculous, terrible, wonderful man,” she muttered, between kisses. 

Slit groaned. 

“Someone help me get him in bed,” she said. 

He opened his eyes in time to see Nux help the psychotic feral haul him up. They carried him into Toast’s room and put him on the bed, where Toast quickly removed his boots and his pants and began covering him with a blanket. 

“What’s ‘drowned’?” Nux asked.

“Dying under water,” one of the old feral women answered. Then she turned to the psychotic feral and frowned. “A lake, you said. How is it that you didn’t drown too?”

“I can swim,” the psychotic feral replied.

“But how?” asked Cheedo. She and everyone else was staring at the psychotic feral. 

“There hasn’t been enough water for anybody to swim in for decades,” said the other old woman. “Where are you from?”

Slit didn’t hear the feral’s response because Capable had brought a shawl and Toast began wrapping his head up like a Buzzard. She only allowed his eyes and nose to peek out. 

“It can’t be!” one of the old feral women said to the psychotic feral. “You look half that!”

“Everybody out!” Toast ordered. 

Capable helped usher everyone else out. She and Nux were the last ones. They stood by the bed, looking down at Slit. Capable was looking at him like he was a pup who’d gotten sick and Nux was looking both impressed and concerned, like he had when Slit had survived the battle that gave him his most chrome scars. 

Slit whimpered pitiably.

“How’d the ‘drowning’ feel?” Nux asked curiously. 

But before Slit could answer, Capable was pushing Nux out the door. “Not now,” she told him. 

“Was terrible,” Slit sniffed. What an awful, mediocre death. 

“I know, darling.” Toast laid down on top of him. “But you’ll be okay.”

Slit was feeling better already remembering how his wife had told everybody that she loved him. 

“You can keep me warmer if you get under the blanket with me,” he told her. Then he whimpered again.

Toast crawled under the blanket and snuggled against him. 

Slit had meant to start trying to breed, but instead he found himself telling his wife, “Didn’t see any shining gates. Was just dark and cold.”

“Thankfully Max was there.”

Slit didn’t understand why the psychotic feral hadn’t let him die worse-than-mediocre. He admitted it to Toast. 

“Because he’s a good person,” she replied. 

Slit couldn’t understand that. He decided that the feral hadn’t wanted Toast and Nux and Capable and the not-wives to be sad like they would have been if he’d died worse-than-mediocre. 

“I would have let him die even though it’d make all of you sad,” he said. 

“I know,” his wife said quietly. 

He supposed that was why she’d called him terrible. But she’d called him wonderful too. 

“I wouldn’t let you die. Or Capable or the Dag or Cheedo. And I’d only let Nux die if he wanted to die historic.” He added, “I wouldn’t let Imperator Furiosa die even though you’d be in charge then because I know it’d make you sad.”

“Good,” Toast said. 

They snuggled in silence for a while, then Toast said, “You know, I worry whenever we leave the Citadel, but I never expected you to almost die right here. There are so many things that could happen at any time that I don’t think about. You could have an accident in training or…”

Or he could get sick and start dying slow. He was only half-life. 

“I want you to know that although I’d never have believed it was possible, I love you.”

“More than you love anyone else?”

She laughed softly. “Different than anyone else.”

“Different better?”

“You’re the only one I want sharing my bed. Somehow you’ve become my real husband and it’s _good_.” 

Slit struggled free of the blankets and shawl so he could wrap his arms around his wife and cuddle her properly. He nuzzled her too. He felt very happy. 

Then the Dag barged in with a bowl of some steaming hot thing. “How is he?” she asked. “I brought soup.”

Nux and Capable and Cheedo were right behind her. Nux was holding a large book. “I brought the ‘dinosaur’ book.”

The book was full of words and ideas that neither he nor Nux understood, but their wives read it to them and tried to explain everything. Slit loved the pictures in it. His favorite was the ‘tyrant lizard king’ even though the one in the picture was malformed like some people born in the wasteland. He’d carved a likeness of it - but with proper arms - on the wall, and he would have carved it on himself if his wife hadn’t forbidden it. 

She took the book away from him now before he could even open it, and began feeding him the soup. 

Slit decided it was worth dying worse-than-mediocre to have everybody in the vault paying attention to him again instead of talking about the psychotic feral all the time.


	17. Chapter 17

Slit stayed in bed all day the next day. He felt okay, but who knew how all that Aqua Cola might have damaged his insides. It was best to do nothing. When he’d been repaired after the battle that gave him his most chrome scars, he’d been kept on a stone slab in the Blood Shed, tended to by the War Pups who helped the Organic Mechanic. 

This was much more shine. It felt warm and nice laying in a bed with blankets and even a pillow to rest his head on. And his wife only left his side briefly. She brought him more soup and fed it to him like he was a very small pup. Slit found that he didn’t mind. He wondered whether this was what it felt like to have a mother. He decided wives were sort of mothers for grown up boys.

Toast was reading to him while he cuddled against her when one of the old feral women came to visit. She seemed both amused and exasperated. 

“He’s fine, Toast. There’s no lasting harm when a person is saved as quickly as he was. No need to baby him.”

Toast looked uncertain, a rare look since she was the Knowing. “Are you sure?”

The old feral nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Not getting up ‘til Organic says I’m fit for duty,” Slit insisted. 

“Your ‘organic mechanic’ has no experience with drowning victims,” the old woman replied. 

Slit didn’t like being referred to as a ‘victim’ even though he had indeed drowned. He scowled at the old feral woman, wishing she’d go away and let his wife get back to reading about komodo dragons. Unlike the dinosaur book, which only had photos of skeletons and imagined drawings, this book had photos of the animals. The ‘komodo dragon’ lizard was bigger than the man in the photo with it, and Slit had been imagining what it’d be like to wrestle one. 

“And you’re missing all the excitement,” she added. 

“What excitement?” Toast asked. 

“Over Max being nearly twice as old as he looks. Getting personal information from him is like pulling teeth, but he says he used to be a cop. Must have been one of the good ones.”

Now Slit really wanted her gone. He whimpered and curled in on himself. 

“What is it, darling?” Toast asked, sounding alarmed. 

The old feral snorted, but Slit heard her leave. He rolled back to face Toast. “Don’t feel well.”

It wasn’t a lie. He didn’t feel well whenever people talked about the psychotic feral.

His wife placed her hand on his forehead. “Hmm, you don’t feel feverish.” 

“I’ll feel better if you snuggle with me,” he told her.

“Mel was right,” she said, but she was smiling. She kissed his cheek and got under the blanket to snuggle with him. 

Slit enjoyed the snuggling for a while before he started touching and kissing his wife and it turned into breeding. The breeding was even better than ever, and he fell asleep feeling as contented as if he were in Valhalla.

Life was even better in the morning. The Dag burst into the room to tell them, “He’s gone! Max left!”

Toast was upset about it, so Slit bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling happily. 

“I think he was bothered by all the attention,” the Dag said. “People were saying he was a god.”

Later Slit learned that what had probably driven the psychotic feral away was being surrounded by War Boys who’d fallen to their knees and praised him as the new Immortan. Slit was thrilled that his brothers had gotten the feral to go away, though he was disgusted by how disappointed they were at the loss of their new Immortan. 

Furiosa was short-tempered and impatient. The wives and not-wives and even Nux thought it was because she was upset about the psychotic feral leaving, but Slit thought she was probably just irritated that even her precious Wretched had tried to make him the new Immortan. 

“I hope he comes back,” Nux mourned. He was back to working on the war rig now that the feral had gone with the vehicle he’d built for him. 

Slit didn’t understand why the feral didn’t want to be worshipped and rule the Citadel and all the wasteland. The psychotic feral really was crazy. But Slit was glad he was. 

“If Capable has a pup, we’re going to name it Max.”

“Mediocre,” Slit proclaimed. “Worse name than Morsov.”

Nux glowered at him. “Your pups are going to be mediocre. They’ll be runts!”

“My pups are going to be real shine and chrome!” 

Their pups might be smaller than Slit would like, since Toast was so little, but they’d be doubly fierce. 

That evening, when they joined their wives and the not-wives in the vault, Slit pointed at Nux and informed Toast, “He insulted our pups.”

Capable raised her eyebrows, but Toast looked unconcerned. “We don’t have children, Slit.”

“We might one day. He called them runts.”

Cheedo giggled, and the Dag said, “Better a runt than an ugly junior warlord.”

Nux was looking abashed. “Didn’t mean to insult you, Toast.”

“No offense taken,” Toast replied, totally uncaring about the grievous insult to her future pups.

“I planted date trees today,” the Dag told them. “Though they won’t bear fruit for thousands of days. Our children will enjoy them even if we don’t get to.”

Slit had never given much thought to what the pups who grew up after he was gone to Valhalla would do. He’d always assumed life for them would be the same as it’d been for him. It was odd to think of pups growing up and having new fruits to eat. But it was a nice thought.

He wrapped his arms around his wife and kissed the top of her head. She turned to smile at him. Slit hoped she’d agree to name their first pup Tyrannosaurus. Would be difficult for a normal pup to spell, but their pup would be knowing like her. 

“You need more belts,” he commented, as he watched Toast undress for their bath after the others had gone to their rooms. 

“I probably don’t even need this one, honestly, except to hold my holster.” 

Slit tried to explain that belts were for more than just holding your stuff, that having more belts - and chrome-looking belts - let everyone know you were important, but Toast was just amused. 

It was still on his mind the next day and he decided it was his duty as her husband to acquire belts for her. He traded half an ‘orange’ fruit from his breakfast to a Repair Boy for a nice belt that would loop around his tiny wife twice. He was searching the back of the scrap heap where Bones didn’t know Slit had seen him hiding his treasures when Diesel popped up behind him.

“There you are! I wanted to tell you, Slit: I got a wife!”

“You did?” Slit asked skeptically. Neither the Dag nor Cheedo had mentioned anything about agreeing to be anyone’s wife. 

“I was rounding up the pups from the milkers’ quarters and I asked one of the milkers if I could have some mother’s milk and she said yes. Then when I was sucking the milk from her teat, she started trying to breed with me. I tried what you and Nux said about licking her breeding part and she loved it! So I asked if she’d be my wife and she said yes! I didn’t even have to give her a ring!”

Diesel was so happy he was practically bouncing about. The milkers weren’t as shiny as his wife and Nux’s wife, but they were healthy and they made mother’s milk, which made them pretty chrome. And it had been Slit sharing his wisdom that had helped Diesel get a wife.

“That’s shine. If you give me that belt with the bits of metal on it, I’ll tell you how to get your wife to let you sleep in her bed and feed you extra green things and snuggle.”

“Snuggle?” Diesel asked, as unfamiliar with the word as Slit had been.

Slit held out his hand. “The belt first.”

Other War Boys wanted to know more about drowning. Slit was the only person in the Citadel who’d ever drowned. Maybe he was the only one in the entire wasteland. He told them all about it, making up the parts he’d forgotten. 

When he saw her in the vault that evening, his wife had that look she got when she was trying to be mad at him but was really amused. 

“Furiosa had to have the old vault door installed down there to keep War Boys from trying to drown themselves.”

Slit was happy to hear that. It meant he’d remain the only one who’d ever drowned. He proudly presented the belts he’d acquired. 

She seemed bemused. She glanced at Capable and the not-wives. 

“Don’t look at me,” the Dag said. “He’s your husband.”

“Yes,” Toast said. Then she sighed and began wrapping the belts around her waist. 

Slit helped her buckle them, then threw a superior look at Nux, who was looking jealous he hadn’t thought to get belts for his wife. Clearly Slit was a better husband than Nux. 

Toast scratched and rubbed Slit’s head as they listened to Capable read about airplanes and spaceships after dinner. Nux was listening raptly, probably imagining himself driving an airplane, and the Dag was braiding Cheedo’s hair. Slit thought about how this was just as shine as doing war, just in a different way. A different shade of shine, like the softer shine of the moon compared to the fiery shine of the sun. 

Now if only he could convince Toast to convince Furiosa to conquer the Bullet Farm and make her the new Bullet Farmer. No, he decided, Bullet Queen sounded better.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for joining me on this joyride. I hope you guys enjoyed reading this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)


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